Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Far too comprehensive to be helpful, December 28, 1999
By A Customer
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.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Bad Test Prep book, August 16, 2002
By A Customer
Don't ask me why I bought this book. I didn't take any of the six practice tests. I only looked at the review material. The explanations are difficult to understand. There is a lot of unnecessary information in this book. The real math IIC test is 50% functions. This book will leave you ill prepared for the real test. Furthermore it includes many topics that aren't on the test such as statistics. If you don't want to get a bad score on the SAT II Math IIC test then don't buy this book. I scored a 550 out of 800. I scored in the bottom 10% of all of the other people that took the test. I'm going to retake it, but this time I'm going to use the Barron's study guide.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Unrealistic, lopsided, and flawed, November 5, 2005
REA's SAT II Math IIC review book has three essential flaws: it has unrealistic practice tests, an undevloped review section, and numerous typos.
Although the six practice tests included in the book are helpful in providing practice, these tests are completely unrealistic. The questions are not ordered according to difficulty, as they are on the test, thus ruining on opportunity to practice pacing. Many questions are unreasonably time consuming or cover irrevelant topics that won't be tested on (DeMoivre's theorem, for example).
REA claims to include a comprehensive review; this is a half-truth. The review consists mostly of equations, rather than explanations of the subject and approaches to solving problems. Some important topics, namely conic sections, are not covered at all, yet they appear in the book's practice tests!
The answers and explanations for the practice test, which could be considered to be part of the overall review, are completely indecipherable. 33.69xcos=-0.98 is not the same as 5cos(33.69)=-0.98. There is no excuse for such glaring errors.
The six practice tests can hardly be considered reedeming features considering how bad they are. If you want to study for Match Level 2, stick to sparknotes or another review book.
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