The Princeton Review Cracking the SAT

I've been a private tutor preparing students for the SAT since 2003. While the best approach is to use several sources, and take authentic SAT tests that are released by ETS, if you're only going to buy one book this is the one to buy. The strategies in this book are the best I've seen. If you already have a good test taking strategy and are just looking for something supplement, the College Board website has what you need to know for the math section, and the most painless way to build vocabulary is through SAT vocabulary books or online at the Logophile's Library.

I very much appreciated the speed of getting this book. It was just what was needed.

I bought over half a dozen books on test prep, and this one is by a huge margin the best of them. It is engaging, and the tone of it is truly remarkable. It feels like you are talking to a highly knowledgeable friend, while imparting more information and knowledge than all the others I bought put together. I would recommend this book to absolutely anyone planning on taking the SAT, or for that matter anyone who finds themselves in school period. The strategies for test-taking, while obviously best suited to the SAT, are very much applicable in every other test taking situation which involves multiple choice. Highly insightful, highly engaging, and actually entertaining.

This book is definitely worth reading and studying. Princeton Review challenges College Board's party line that there are only minimal benefits (in the range of 50 points improvement for CR and for Math) from pre-test prepping and coaching for the SAT, and that there is no "trick" to doing well on the SAT because it is essentially an aptitude test that measures verbal and mathematical skills acquired over a long period of time. While not denying the benefit of basic skills acquired through conscientious schoolwork over time, Princeton Review maintains that is not the only way to improve your score, possibly dramatically. By studying patterns in the ETS answer choices and question sequences, Princeton Review has come up with what it calls the Joe Blog approach, which is a very clever strategy for making educated guesses when you are not 100% sure of an answer to a multiple-choice question. At its core, Joe Blog says that on easier questions (the earlier questions in a section), go for the obvious answer that Joe Blog (a hypothetical Joe-Average) would guess; on the harder ones (the later questions in a section), avoid the "obvious answers, because they are "tricks" to fool Joe Blog, who will jump on superficially correct, but profoundly wrong answers. Beyond the Joe Blog approach, the Princeton Review writers do provide excellent practice exercises on basic reading and mathematical content. They seem to have studied the content of the test better than most authors. If there is one flaw, it is that the explanations to the practice questions don't always explain the correct answer very well. However, along with the "official" books and online study resources put out by the College Board, using this book from Princeton Review will help you do the best you can -- -- which what test taking process is and should be all about.

For those of you getting ready to crack open the books and study for the SAT's, I suggest reading this book first. I just took the SAT's and found this book, the study tips and practice tests to be very helpful. I also liked the format.