CEEAE's Review of REA's Best Coaching...for the SAT

FULL REVIEW
THE VERY BEST COACHING & STUDY COURSE?
This is a powerful statement, and one that usually sells more than a few books, if true. Well, guess what: we will be the judge of this superlative claim.

The "very best" thing we can say about this book is that it provides some pretty standard strategies and an ample number of reinforcement problems. Also, the Reading Comprehension passage and questions were very accurate as were all of the Writing Skills multiple choice questions. Finally, good explanations accompanied each of the four practice exams, one diagnostic test and three practice tests. Also, all four of the exams were in the book, not on a CD or disk as in other books.

FLAWED TEST FORMAT
There must have been some bad information given to test prep companies since so many book present the same flawed test format. Unfortunately, this book follows the same flawed format, but with a bizarre twist. There are 10 sections on the actual SAT, but the practice tests in some books will have only 9 sections. This discrepancy is due to the fact that 1 of the 10 sections does not count toward the student's score, so these books notify the student that there are really 10 sections on the exam but only present 9 in their practice tests, since only 9 sections will count in determining their score (Princeton Review's SAT book is the only book that has all 10 sections in each practice test).

Although the actual test has one Math section with 8 Multiple Choice and 10 Grid-In problems, two of the three practice tests in the book featured a section with 11 Grid-In questions. The other practice test and the diagnostic test featured only 5 Grid-Ins. Why? Got us; we cannot figure out why either. Further, the Grid-Ins are supposed to occur in one of the two 25 minute sections, but on the practice tests in this book they always occur on the 20 minute section.

INACCURATE PRACTICE TEST QUESTIONS
Although the Reading Comprehension and Writing Skills questions were accurate, the rest of the test was not very accurate. The latter Sentence Completion problems were too easy on all of the practice exams. Math problems tended to be a little weirder than those on the actual SAT. Some of the Math questions tested concepts that have never been tested on the SAT. This is not to say that the concepts are inelgible to be on the SAT, but to date they have not on any actual exam, so at best these questions are inaccurate. We also found a couple of errors in the Writing Skills section, nothing major but still there were errors.

The practice tests were accompanied by adequate explanations.

TEXTBOOK-LIKE PRESENTATION
First, although we are not fans of a dry, textbook-like presentation of strategies and of material review does not mean that it is necessarily a negative, but our collective experience tells us that this presentation will not be conducive to learning for most students as well. If you like the textbook-like presentation, we recommend McGraw-Hill's SAT I book, but we suspect that those who do prefer the textbook-like presentation are in the minority. The wall of text on every page makes even the most ardent reader increasingly despondent. There is something psychologically intimidating about page after page of extremely dense text. Another reason why a presentation of a boundless block of text is less effective is that it is much harder to extract the main point or idea from a block of monochromatic text. We found this to be especially true when we turned to the Math review section. There was not anything intrinsically wrong with the review, but it even hurt our eyes to read the material, even though we already knew it!

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this book is NOT (emphasis added intentionally) the very best coaching and study course for the SAT. Indeed, it is far from being the best anything for a prep book. Unfortunately, this book features a flawed practice test format, and inaccurate test questions. Though it does present a reasonable review as well as adequate strategies, its presentation is just too dry to be effective. Therefore, we cannot recommend this "very best" guide since far better alternatives are readily available.

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