SAT - Cracking the SAT 2009

A Review of Cracking the SAT by Princeton Review

I know you've heard of The Princeton Review, the company that offers test prep for every major standardized test you can think of, and some you've never even heard about before. They offer books, classes, and tutoring programs for the GMAT, GRE, LSAT, SAT, ACT and more.

If planning to purchase an SAT prep book is high on your list of "things to do very soon", then The Princeton Review's Cracking the SAT 2009 edition, one of The Princeton Review's most popular sellers, may be the book worth picking up. Read below to see if you agree.

• It's readable. The Princeton Review knows their audience (high schoolers), and caters to it with the easy, laid-back language of this SAT prep book. Common vernacular, slang, idioms, and clear, concise language are threaded together to convey the difficult concepts they present throughout the book. Smart!
• It has SAT-exclusive testing tips. You can't take every test the same way; the SAT is no exception. This book includes testing tips specific to the SAT alone.
• It has a DVD. Face it. Some things are just easier to read interactively on the computer. The DVD offers an array of useful, colorful explanations for the prep book. And, in case you forget to use the DVD, the book refers to it in the margins again and again.
• It provides "Joe Bloggs". Joe is a character who demos what not to do in every SAT situation a student will encounter. He's the buffoon who will guess at the wrong answer choices. It's a little corny, but helpful.
• It uses metaphors. For math concepts, this book offers metaphors to help explain. For example, the book equates a staircase to positive and negative numbers, helping to decode the theory for kids who never understood it before.
• It has a "Hit Parade".This is one of the most helpful ideas in the book. The "Hit Parade" is a list of vocabulary words grouped by theme. For example, "Are you talkin' to me?" is one of the given groups. The words in that category all have to do with speaking or language in some way. It's definitely easier to remember words in a category than to remember them in isolation.

Can you say gigantic? This book with its end-all approach to scoring high on the SAT is huge. And although it's a paperback, the sucker is heavy, although not as heavy as the literature book students are hauling around in their backpacks. In addition, if a student were actually going to go through all 661 pages, they'd be prepared, but they'd probably hate the SAT by the time they finished the book. It's prep-work is seriously time-consuming. I'm not sure if a student whose parents are probably forcing him or her to study in the first place is going to have the dedication to make it through each section. And since the book builds on itself, the kid kinda needs to do just that.

Despite the never-ending pages of SAT prep-work, Cracking the SAT 2009 edition by The Princeton Review is a good buy. The authors spent considerable time researching their audience and prepared the materials to meet their needs. If a kid can make it through the lengthy tome and can apply its techniques, he or she will have a much better projected score on the SAT when it's testing time. And after all, isn't that the point?