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(More customer reviews)To help my nephew prepare for the SAT, I bought several products: Math Shortcuts to Ace the SAT by Achievement Publishing, Cracking the SAT by Princeton Review, Kaplan's SAT Online training program (by far, the most expensive), and last-year's Kaplan SAT CD software. The best products by far were Cracking the SAT (Princeton Review) and Math Shortcuts to Ace the SAT.
Math Shortcuts to Ace the SAT is a short, quick read of 34 tips with related examples. (By the way, don't take the title LITERALLY. You probably won't "ace" the SAT. It's a common practice to tout a book by giving it an ambitious title.)
I didn't care for Kaplan's math format at all. Cracking the SAT (Princeton Review) was easier to understand and gave clearer tips to crack the hard problems, but Math Shortcuts... was easiest of all to learn. It's barely 100 pages, far less intimidating than the other books. I was able to read it and do all the examples in two evening sessions.
I took a sample SAT myself and scored in the low to mid 600s in math and verbal, but I'd didn't have a clue how to solve some of the math questions. (By the way, "Cracking the SAT" (Princeton Review) explains why the harder questions are things you'll never see in high school math classes.) After reading Math Shortcuts, I retested on the last five of twenty-five questions on two sample math sections to see how I improved.
As you know, the last questions are always the hardest. On these 10 hardest questions, before reading Math Shortcuts, I got 3 correct, 3 wrong, and 4 that I didn't attempt. After reading Math Shortcuts, I got 10 correct. I doubt that I could get a perfect score consistently, but the book obviously helped me. Since there are three math sections (not just two), my math score would probably have improved by over 100 points. (However, I took a lot of math in college and use it at work, so my results might not reflect that of the typical high school student.)
My nephew confirmed that he liked Math Shortcuts to Ace the Sat best of all. After studying the book, he took a sample SAT and increased his math score 90 points.
He found Kaplan's SAT online to be the least useful of all.
In summary, I'd highly recommend Math Shortcuts to Ace the SAT by Achievement Publishing to improve SAT math scores. For verbal and overall study, I'd recommend Cracking the SAT by Princeton Review. It does a good job of explaining how and when to guess and how the SAT is scored. Its explanations of how crack analogies was clearer than Kaplan. Its grouping of common SAT vocabulary words into common categories was far superior to Kaplain's memorization approach.
One final warning to parents. Don't expect your kids to do well on the SAT because they are good students. The SAT doesn't measure that. Get them some good study resources a few months before the test; otherwise, your student will be handicapped when he/she takes the SAT compared to students who have used good resources.
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Math Shortcuts to Ace the SAT & PSATMost SAT preparation books on the market offer a review of arithmetic algebra and geometry and include general strategies with practice exams. Unlike these traditional study guides,this bookis a supplement with 34 specific shortcuts and strategies for the mathematics portion of SAT and PSAT college entrance exams. Fractions, quantitative comparisons, square roots, algebraic expressions, and geometric concepts are just a few of the topics that are covered. Each shortcut is described in a step-by-step method and examples are provided. A concise summary of formulas and concepts along with a glossary of terms is also included. Students who need an extra edge on the mathematical portion of these tests will benefit from the specific strategies in this book.
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