Customer Reviews

Cracking the SSAT and ISEE, 2007 Edition (Private Test Preparation)

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This book is the best organized and most comprehensive available. However, it still is lacking. I've been tutoring this test for 5 years, and it is especially hard to differentiate the middle level and upper level exams. You can tell PR struggles with this differentiation as well.

Math - By far its most useful section. PR does a good job of covering all of the concepts you will need to know, as well as providing some solid "ISEE-like" questions. The book doesn't have many difficult questions for students aiming for the 90th+ percentile, and is limited in quantitative comparisons.

Synonyms - Just study vocabulary (the PR list is a good place to start), and use PR questions for practice. I personally think PR over-sells strategies such as positive/negative.

Sentence Completions - Decent strategies, decent practice...if you need more questions and your taking the middle or upper level ISEE, buy an SAT book from College Board and use the SCs. You can also use some of the math questions.

Passage-based reading - Horrible!

Practice tests - Good practice.

My daughter used this book to study for her SSAT
last year and scored very high. The practice tests
good and it helped her get prepared. I would recommend
this book to anyone getting ready for the SSAT. My
daughter is in boarding school now and is doing very
well. She actually had multiple schools aceept her and
want her to attend because of her high scores.

I occasionally tutor students preparing for the SSAT or ISEE test and have accumulated quite a collection of prep books. All are thick, heavy books, each with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. Since the test formats don't change from year to year, I prefer to buy books from previous years to save money.

My current student's parents bought her the latest version of the Princeton Review's guide. It differs very little from my 2007 model with mostly the same exercises and identical practice tests. Her book, however, has one extra test and includes answer explanations, a feature I would appreciate for the math activities.

The main problem inherent in all these books is that they include materials for two distince tests and the various levels for each test. Thus for a specific need, in my case the lower level ISEE, there's actually much less applicable material than one would suspect in a book exceeding 600 pages in length.

I'd suggest that parents purchase two books to ensure having enough practice materials. Despite some limitations and flaws in them, I do like this book and the Kaplan ISEE book. Activities for the SSAT and the ISEE tests are similar enough that one can use materials for both tests to practice for a specific level.

Recommended for those students taking the ISEE. Have yet to use the SSAT study guide.