Customer Reviews

SAT II: Math Level IC (REA) -- The Best Test Prep for the SAT II (SAT PSAT ACT (College Admission) Prep)

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I've been teaching SAT and SAT II courses professionally for around 5 years, and I can honestly say that this title was one of the least-popular and least-helpful books I have EVER used. The title (or sub-title) of the book states that this is the most comprehensive title available -- that's the problem. It's far TOO comprehensive. It includes lots and lots of information that has never been on the test, and that is very unlikely to appear on the test in the future. (If you learn EVERY word in the dictionary, you're sure to get a good verbal score on the SAT, but there are FAR more effective ways to INTELLIGENTLY improve your vocabulary!) To make matters worse, it seems to have been written BY math lovers FOR math lovers and is nearly incomprehensible to someone who's not a math lover. Hey, if you love math, then you don't need a prep book for the SAT II in the first place! The book has way too much information to absorb, the practice tests are unrealistically difficult, and there's no easy way to use only selected portions of the book (for an abbreviated prep based upon the most important concepts, for example). This book feels like a desk reference for mathematics, not a study guide.

In my classes and tutoring, I've found that the books by the big test prep companies (Princeton Review and Kaplan) are concise, accurate, and logically arranged. If forced to choose, I give the Princeton Review title a slight edge above the Kaplan book, but both are excellent titles. I suggest getting both the Princeton Review and the Kaplan titles -- compared to a prep course or college tuition, they're an amazingly inexpensive investment.

How much did I dislike this book? After reading the title, I bought a dozen of them to use with my students -- but after using it for one group of students, I ended up shipping all of the unused copies back. These criticisms apply to both the Math IC and IIC books -- I don't know about the rest of the books for the other subject tests.

I gave myself enough time to review with this book, but it didn't help me at all. I wound up desperately searching for my old school notes to help me understand what the book was trying to explain. I struggled to absorb the information in the book because there was so much of it, and after I took the test I found out that most of it was extraneous. I got a 630 on the test, and while that isn't a terrible score, I bought the book in hopes of working up to somewhere near a 700. I could have gotten a 630 on my own, without wasting my money on this book.
There has to be a better review book than this. Try as hard as you can to find something else.