Any book (especially those related to the SAT) which can hold a teenager's attention span for longer than 9 seconds is a winner. This book does that by using humor and kid-speak to grab their reader's attention, holding it long enough to throw some useful info at them. It's not a comprehensive test guide, but if you "Look Inside" (click the photo on the product page) you can get a sense of what you'll be buying before you make your purchase. It's not a particularly long book, and it has some cartoon illustrations as well as a very nice recipe for 'Sweet and Tasty 800 Bars' when discussing good snacks for test day.
My daughter, who is at the top of her class, taking AP classes and doing well, has a very good Critical Reading score (per PSAT testing), but her Math score lags. She takes a College Prep class, and once a week or more they are working on SAT prep, but I still thought if I could find a book with strategies and tips, it would help her to approach the test in a positive, proactive way on every section.
To her credit she wanted to take the SATs for the first time this Spring to get the most in-class time possible prior to taking it. She has her eyes on some selective schools and getting a stellar SAT score would definitely boost her chances, thus the book. SPECIAL NOTE: In the Spring of 2016 - Up Your Score SAT: The Underground Guide for 2015 isn't going to be accurate for those taking the SAT. The authors do point that out at the start of the book. It will still be good for test takers THIS Spring and in the Fall and Winter of 2015.
The book actually has a team of authors (5) all who claim to have aced the SAT and went to top notch universities (Stanford, Harvard, Yale and Cornell). I would agree with a reviewer who mentions that this book doesn't replace solid practice-type prep, but I think it does enhance it.
Whenever we hear the word 'test' we all freak out on some level. This book helps to take that anxiety down a notch or two, and put it into perspective. I'm not thrilled with a small section that basically encourages kids to blackmail their parents into promising them a new 'toy' if they meet a high score goal, but I get where they are trying to go with it.
The book also talks about how to send SAT scores, how scores and percentiles are connected, important literary terms, similar looking words, basic math for Geometry, tips like " Always guess..." on Grid-in problems as there is nothing to lose in this section.
The 6 Rules of Guessing are good tips!
1. One is most like the others.
2. Problems increase in difficulty as you go along. (Except the reading passages.)
3. Three's a crowd. (If you get a run of 3 or more answers which are the same, one is probably wrong.)
4. Etc... are in the book.
This book while not revolutionary,is a useful guide for bright kids who just need to remember how to approach the SAT to do well. I don't think it replaces taking a practice test or studying vocab words if that's an area your student needs to work on, but it can help them to think differently about approaching the test with an eye on the prize - a great SAT score.
I'd recommend it to reluctant SAT test takers, and those who have test anxiety. It has a 'can-do' feel about it and some solid information in short, manageable doses.
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NOTE: My daughter is scheduled for 6/6 to take her SAT test and has taken the PSAT at the start of her junior year with these scores: 65 (CR - 610/700 projected - 98th), 49 (Math - 460/560 - 54th), and 57 (Writing - 520/640 - 84th). She is currently taking AP Lit, AP US History, and Pre-Calculus with A's in all of them. I think this book, if taken to heart, could boost her scores for the SAT to reflect 720+ for CR, 610+ for Math, and 640+ for Writing. I'll update in late June to let you know how she did after reading this book, (1) practice test and using Khan Academy SAT prep in her College Prep class at school 2-3 times per week for 1/2 hour.
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UPDATE: 6/6/15 - My daughter took her SATs yesterday and came out talking about how she'd noticed that some tips from this book were spot on helpful! One of them was relating to answering questions and not having the same letter more than 3 times in a row. She said that was helpful because it gave her pause when she would get to a question where she didn't know the answer and wanted to guess.
She also said that in the Math section she was much more aware (after reading the book) of how to approach the section, which helped her manage her anxiety about it all.
This book is the one she kept coming back to, and the one she found amusing throughout. I think that helped make things stick in her head better than it otherwise might have with some dry reads.
She gets her test results on 6/25. Unfortunately she had the flu when she took the test, so we're already planning for her to take it again in October, but who knows... maybe with the help of this book she had the tools she need to do the job sick or not.
I'll update with her scores after the 25th.
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UPDATE: 6/9/15 - Checked the College Board site today and found a message that essentially said there was an error on the SAT given on 6/6, affecting all who took the test that day. The error means that they will eliminate scoring of one section of both the Math and Reading portions of the test. The essay section (Writing) was not affected. They assure test takers that the test will count, and that they will have enough questions to score to produce scores on time.
What does that mean? If the test taker did a great job in the to be scored sections - it's to their advantage to have fewer questions. If they didn't, eliminating questions may be a tough break. At least the College Board will soon be posting both new testing dates for the fall and the scores. "Fingers crossed!"
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