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The Official SAT Study Guide (平装)
by The College Board
| Category:
SAT guide, SAT Prep |
| Market price: ¥ 228.00
MSL price:
¥ 208.00
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A must-have tool for a successful SAT. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 7 items |
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A. Biderman (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
I got this book about a month before I took the SAT Reasoning test for the first time. The only other material I used was the material on the SparkNotes website.
I thought practice tests in this book was extremely helpful and dead-on accurate. However, I barely paid any attention to the other things in the book because they were pretty useless and were mostly things that have already drilled in our brains. I didn't subtract a star for this because I felt that the essay examples and the practice tests were excellent.
Honestly, get the book, but don't just rely on SAT prep material or you won't do well. I learned a lot in preparation, yes, but I feel that reading for hours daily has really been what got me a good score on the critical reading section. I took the skills to EVERYTHING I read, not just during school. For the Writing section, same thing. For example, my problem is sentence variation so I made a conscious effort to switch things up in my daily writing (IMs, email, etc). And if you have not taken the SAT yet, realize that the math section does not involve hard math. It's the ability to quickly solve logic problems and trick questions in 25 minutes. You're better off timing yourself on math work rather than obsessing over formulas.
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TestMagic (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
Official materials are always the most important for the SAT, and this is currently the only source available for authentic SAT questions. The questions and essay topics contained in this book give a nice overview of what an SAT-taker will see on test day, so it would be wise to complete and review as many questions as you can in this book.
This book is about 890 pages long. Approximately 380 pages are devoted to test preparation material at the beginning, and the remaining 510 pages or so contain the actual eight practice tests. Most people rightly focus their energy on the practice tests in this book, as they are the most important.
The first part of the book, the test preparation section, offers a good enough review, but it lacks the candor found in books not written by the publisher of the test. The review section has overviews of the SAT, the Critical Reading Section (which used to be called the Reading Comprehension Section), the Writing Section (which was introduced in March of 2005), and the Math Section. The review of the Reading Section is okay, but truth be told, it's very difficult to coach SAT reading in a book--there's really no substitute for having a live teacher help you with the reading. The review of the Writing Section gives an overview of the grammar tested, but it doesn't even begin to touch on the range of grammar rules and usage `tendencies' that you would need to know to ace the SAT. The sample essays, however, are extremely helpful. Be sure to read through ALL of them to make sure you understand what the SAT is looking for in the scoring. Finally, the Math Review section has a nice overview of general math, but if you're having difficulty on the harder math questions on the SAT, you'll probably need to turn elsewhere for help, as I don't think there's enough emphasis given to the hard math questions in this book.
This book, however, has two important shortcomings. First, it does not contain any explanations, so if you've missed any of the questions, you won't be able to check this book for explanations. College Board offers access to explanations, but at a cost. Many other websites also offer explanations, as well. Second, the tests do not give an estimate of your score; rather, they give a score range. For example, you might take a test and find out that on one section your score range is 480 to 560. Of course it's always better to have a single number, not a range.
All in all, the single most important book currently available.
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Martin Zaraninov (MSL quote) , USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
The Official Study Guide offers the most up-to-date material that can be found on the real SAT. The questions are realistic, and the 8 practice tests are all clevery crafted and resemble the actual reasoning test so much that i found myself wondering whether they were practice or actual tests!!! The scoring guidelines are easy and clear to follow, and unlike other SAT preparation books, they are correct and reflect the real scoring methods; in other words you will find that your actual scores are not so much different from your practice scores with the Study Guide! Before i took my SATs i purchased more than 8 books from various publishers, such as Kaplan, and The Princeton Review, but none of them matched the quality nor the level of the material presented in this blue book...I discovered that most of the other books were rushed, had spelling mistakes, and errors in the answer keys, which combined with the faulty score ranges, provided for an unrealistic and sometimes even impossible scores! The Sat Study Guide is also valuable with the fact that it combines bulletproof tested strategies, and working methods for tackling the different sections of the test! It provides real sample questions and short practice sections, as well as actual essays for refference. When i say real and working, i mean that the methods suggested by the Study Guide are efficient, clever, and yet they leave enough room for each section to be dealt with within the timed requirements (for example - one of the other books i purchased suggested that a full 10minutes whould be spent planning the essay, with additional 2 minutes at the end for proofreading, leaving only 13 minutes to write "the perfect" essay, which is unrealistic and frankly quite impossible!!!) This book is a treasure for any serious SAT test-taker! It helped me achieve scores in the 94th percentile, with one of my sections being in the 99th! It is a must-have for every High School Junior, and thus i rate it with 5 stars, and reccommend it without reservations!
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
Upon first glance, the questions in the practice tests are not as difficult to solve as the ones on the actual SAT and do not have explanations for the answers given. Other books published by Kaplan, Barrons, and the Princeton Review have questions that test your skills more and their practice tests have explanations for the answers to each problem.
Moreover, the Official Study Guide lacks a vocabulary list of the most common words found on the actual SAT. It would be better to purchase a book with a vocabulary list and perhaps even vocabulary flashcards for your personal use. (You never know when you'll be stuck waiting in line for something with nothing to do). It's very important to have a vocabulary list overall because so much of the test involves knowing words and their definitions/ role in sentence structure.
Nonetheless, it's good to get a feel of what ETS and the collegeboard expects on the SAT by taking the practice tests in this book. You can catch on to some subtle nuances in the questions (for example, the word "and" often asks for synonyms in fill-in-the-blank questions). However, those nuances are not outright said and the rest of the strategies in the book are pretty mediocre. They're more like the instructions for how to take the test rather than strategies to solve problems, (from the easiest to the most difficult).
A way to get around the weaknesses of this book is to purchase or check out other SAT books from your local book store, Amazon.com, or the library. Work with the Official SAT Study Guide to get a basic understanding of the test(though some of the information offered is redundant). But browse through other books as well and read their strategies to deepen your understanding/ further develop your problem-solving skills.
In conclusion, getting the score you want on the SAT is closely associated with feeling confident on the test day. The more knowledge you have on the SAT, the more confident you'll be. So it's okay to study with many different books.
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David Goodwin (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
The Official SAT Study Guide is "10 Real SATs" in all but name. Created and published by the College Board - the creators and administrators of the actual SAT - this series has for years been the single most valuable resource for SAT preparation. The value does not necessarily derive from the instructional material that makes up the first portion of the book (which is instructive and adequate, but nothing spectacular), but from the actual SAT tests from which the series used to get its name. While the multipound test-prep tomes from Kaplan, Princeton Review, and others all have their strong points, nothing beats having actual SAT questions and tests at your disposal; yes, there is a distinct difference between questions actually vetted by ETS and those created by third-party companies. Simply put, 10 Real SATs was THE tool for preparing for the most overemphasized-yet-necessary test on the block.
The recent advent of the "New" SAT (which, for the record, removes Quantitative Comparisons and analogies, adds some higher math content, introduces "short" reading comprehension passages, and features a watered-down version of the old SAT II writing with an additional 25 minute, blink-and-you'll-miss-it essay section that receives far too much press) meant that the Real SAT product line was due for an upgrade. As prior "new editions" of 10 Real SATs rarely featured changes that weren't of a we-swapped-out-two-tests-and-added-in-two-new-tests character, I was curious to see how the College Board would revamp its flagship line. Unfortunately, it's a mixed effort.
For starters, we now have 8 full-length tests. Granted, each test is a decent bit longer - the new SAT is an absolute marathon - but the net effect is still a bit detrimental; needless to say, it's unsurprising that the College Board elected to avoid calling this book "8 Real SATs!" (These also aren't "real" SATs, a problem I'll get to momentarily)
The writing section is generally well introduced in the instructional material. As mentioned before, the "new" writing section is in reality a watered-down version of the old SAT II writing, but it's presented well. My big criticism here involves the book's treatment of the essay. It presents "samples" of good essays, bad essays, and essays in between. Page 123 presents an essay that supposedly received a score of "6" (the highest score available), and I'm halfway convinced that this example of SAT perfection is the cause of at least some of the overemphasis of the essay by panicked parents; pedantic, long-winded, and full of jargon, it sounds decidedly unlike something a normal high-school Junior would create in 25 minutes. There's another example of an essay that received the top score on the preceding two pages, and it is MUCH more palatable, but it is written in handwriting (as opposed to "handwriting font") and is thus frequently ignored... which is quite unfortunate.
The real problem with this book, though, is that those celebrated "real" SATs... well, aren't anymore. Oh, to be sure, these are still real College Board questions, and the book is still valuable for that alone. But these SATs were never given, and as such the scoring data - a valuable part of prior editions - is next to useless.
For example, instead of the one-through-five difficulty scale, we get a three-stage "easy, medium, hard" scale for ranking questions, which is far less useful than the ranked-by-reaction scores in the old book. Worse, the difficulty rankings seem to have no real basis in reality, especially in the new Writing section; whole sections that all receive an "easy" ranking will demonstrate distinct fluctuations in difficulty.
It's the scoring information, though, that is really the book's biggest flaw. With older editions, after struggling through a timed practice test, you received the satisfaction of getting a distinct score; those "Real SATs" were actually given, and thus raw scores were accurately weighted to a corresponding score on the infamous out-of-1600 scale. For the new SAT, this immediately becomes somewhat problematic, as the inclusion of the essay makes scoring of the writing section difficult. But as these SATs were never given, there isn't a real scale for the conversion of raw scores to weighted scores. Instead, the CB presents a range of possible scores; unfortunately, these ranges are often frustratingly broad and vague ("610-690" is a huge range to contemplate).
I suppose the above criticism is somewhat unfair, as the College Board was confronted with an unwinnable dilemma. On one hand, it could delay the revision of its flagship title until enough SATs had been administered to generate a "real SAT" book; on the other, doing so would result in the odd situation of the College Board not releasing an official guide to its own creation! This dilemma, however, does not excuse the College Board from creating a new edition that is decidedly less useful than preceding editions.
Verdict: Yes, The Official SAT Study Guide is still the best thing out there, as its ability to use actual SAT questions makes it an invaluable study tool. Be aware, though, that accurate scoring is almost impossible with the new edition.
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Gaetan Lion (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
This guide is essential for a simple reason. It is the only one that provides authentic SAT questions. When preparing for the SAT, it is critical that you practice with test samples using true SAT questions. All the other companies (Barron's, Kaplan, Princeton Review, etc...) provide imitations of such questions. Some are criticized for being too hard, or too easy. Don't waste your time and use the real stuff, this College Board guide.
Also, this guide gives you access to excellent online resources at the College Board website. These include more online SAT test samples. The most intriguing resource is the one that gives you an automated score of your essay. So, you can test what works or not for this new essay portion.
However, you can't trust the test makers to give insightful strategies about how to handle their own test. That would be like a conflict of interest. Use this book strictly to practice the test and have access to the online tools and nothing else. For strategies, you'll have to look elsewhere. Some of the best sources are from books available in pdf files on sale on the web by companies founded by students who have been extremely successful SAT test takers. One of these companies is Lazy Student's Way. If you want to spend less money, use the Kaplan SAT guide. It is much richer and better in terms of providing strategies than this College Board guide. Either way, you will be well armed to ace the SAT. |
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Carrie McLaren (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
Everyone knows that you need this book to get "official" SATs to practice with, because the College Board doesn't seem to let any of the other books publish their tests. Stay away from the knock-off tests in Princeton Review or their kind (like Rocket)-they AREN'T real SATs and they're full of mistakes. Even the tests in the "Official Guide" are a bit quirky, though, because the answer key only gives score "ranges" like "640-720" for an SAT math score. If I spend 4 hours taking a practice test, I want to know EXACTLY how well I did, not approximately!! Two other big drawbacks to this books are that the answer key contains No Answer Explanations, and the lessons in the book are very weak.
So, if you're serious about improving your score, and you're willing to do some work (like I was), you'll need a good review guide to go along with it. The best one by far is "McGraw-Hill's SAT I", but be SURE to get the second edition. The great thing about it is that when you take a practice test, it gives very detailed explanations of each answer, as well as References to Concept Lessons that are excellent. It teaches you with a very effective method and gives lots of practice. I particularly liked the lessons on percents and negative exponents, which I ALWAYS had trouble with, and the lessons on Reading Comp, which realy helped me. It also has Great vocab lessons.
Take the tests in the "McGraw-Hill" book (which aren't real SATs, that's the drawback, they're a little bit harder) about 2 months before your SAT, then use the answer key to point you to the lessons you need to review. Then take the tests in the "Official SAT Study Guide" to see how you're improving (except remember that you'll only get that annoying "score range" which can be pretty wide). I did this before the October SAT, and my scores improved by 420 points overall, and just found out that I was accepted at my top-choice college. To see improvements like that, you Absolutely Need the combination of books. I hope this helps you little ones! |
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1 Total 1 pages 7 items |
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