CEEAE's Review of Cracking the New SAT (2007)

Prep. Book Reviews

Cracking the New SAT (2007 edition)
Princeton Review
6/29/06 - Composite Review

REVIEW SUMMARY
CONCLUSION
This is the standard anti-SAT book. You will learn alot about the SAT and how to approach test questions, but do not get bogged down worrying about Joe Bloggs.

THE GOOD
-- The entire book seems to be designed to demystify and
  then understand the SAT
-- Many efficient test-taking strategies for all subject areas
    and question types
-- Great vocabulary review and effectively organized too
-- 3, extremely accurate, SAT practice tests with Equating
    sections (explanations are provided to every question)
-- These 3 tests may be MORE ACCURATE than those in
    College Board's The Official SAT Study Guide

THE BAD
-- The "Joe Bloggs" method has left many students
    confused when they take the actual exam
-- Don't read the passage?? WTF?? Definitely read the
    passage, the SAT will punish you for not reading the
    passage!
-- More practice problems should be provided to effectively
    reinforce the information in the text
-- Some students may find the Math material review too
    brief
-- 4 of the 7 tests are on the accompaning CD-ROM
    (only 3 are in the book)

FULL REVIEW
THE "ANTI-SAT" PREP BOOK
From the first page The Princeton Review - Cracking the New SAT seems designed to demystify and help students understand the SAT. In fact, The Princeton Review is renowned for its "test focus". Further, The Princeton Review seems to revel in its role as the "anti-SAT" prep company. They lodge a number of complaints against the SAT and the College Board during the text of this book. In fact, one could say that The Princeton Review - Cracking the New SAT is designed to help the student "overcome" the SAT. This focus has not gone without retribution. Indeed, McGraw-Hill's SAT 1 book seems to have been designed as the anti-anti-SAT book. Perhaps, it can be best stated that it is designed as the anti-Princeton Review book.

This book reads like a tutoring session. The text is clear and concise, and at times it is even humorous. This book could easily be read cover-to-cover in a few days. Pages seem to just flip by, and the use of bolding and increasing font sizes do an impressive job maintaining the reader's focus. Reading Cracking the New SAT did not feel like reading a textbook and at times the reviewers forgot that they were actually learning.

ESSAY GRADING
This book provides possibly the most honest appraisal of how the essay is really graded. We read that usually essays take hours to grade, but each SAT-essay is alotted only a few minutes for evaluation. Consequently, the student can make some small errors, in favor of focusing on the argument being constructed and the structure of the essay. However, the coverage of the essay could be more extensive, and students looking to dramtically increase their essay scores may want to look elsewhere for a more comprehensive treatment.

EFFECTIVE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION
The vocabulary review is organized not alphabetically but by common meaning. We have seen research that indicates that the student is more likely to recall words that are grouped together with other words of similar meanings. We also approved of the prefix and root word list provided after the vocabulary review.

CONCISE MATH REVIEW
The Math material review should be more than adequate for most students, though it was lacking in practice problems and depth. Some students who require a more comprehensive review and refresher would be well-advised to look to another book such as Kaplan or McGraw-Hill.

"JOE BLOGGS"
However, we did not like the Joe Bloggs method that pervaded the entire text. This method has probably been part of The Princeton Review test preparation since their inception. Our main complaint with this method is that it usually results in the student focusing too much on what would Joe Bloggs do (WWJBD) instead of contending with the questions themselves. Actually we think it is a great strategy and it is very helpful for students to demystify a difficult and streesful test, but it should be used in careful moderation. We think that a superior alternative strategy is to first try to solve the questions outright, but if there are questions that the student is stuck on then she should apply the Joe Bloggs method. For most questions, however, this method is too cumbersome and inefficient for us to recommend. So not surprisingly, although all three subject areas are covered in this book, our favorite section was the one on the writing skills subject area. It contained some great strategies and effective methods for approaching the questions, but most importantly-the Joe Bloggs method was not presented.

DON'T READ THE PASSAGE?
Another irksome aspect of this book is the strategy that you should not read the passage only the questions and then use them to determine what you should read. Since a majority of the correct answer choices in reading comprehension embpdy the correct main idea we are very hesitant to agree with The Princeton Review on this one. Also, what does The Princeton Review propose for questions on the main idea?

PRACTICE TESTS - 3 OR 7?
Finally, three practice tests are provided at the end of the book. These tests contain some of the most accurate test problems we have ever seen. Further, each of the three tests contains an equating section. This is truly impressive because The Princeton Review had to create more practice problems even though those problems would not factor into the scoring of the test. Also, there are answer sheets provided for each of the three exams. However, we were really impressed by how many of the test questions were worded as confusingly as possible-true to SAT form. Even if you can get your hands on The Official SAT Study Guide, these tests may be better.

There remains one caveat about the tests, however. Three of the tests are in the book, but the other 4 are on a CD-ROM. Hence if you want to do these tests you need to load the CD into your computer and take them via the computer instead of on pencil and paper. These tests were not reviewed, so we cannot say whether their difficulty and question structure are commensurate with the other three tests provided in the book itself.

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