If you just need a refresher of SAT material and want to take a bunch of sample SATs, this book will serve your needs. But if you want thorough lessons, you'll need another SAT prep book.
By itself, The Official SAT Study Guide fulfills 4 of my high expectations for an ideal SAT test prep study guide.
First, You'll Read an Overview of the Test
The Official SAT Study Guide opens with brief overviews of the SAT and PSAT. It offers a few general tips for performing well on these tests, but none of the advice is particularly clever. Most of the advice is intuitive, like pacing yourself as you answer questions, but it doesn't hurt to read a reminder. These 30 pages don't have much content.Then, You'll Learn About Each Test Section and Question Type
The second component of the Official SAT Study Guide introduces you to each question type found in each section of the SAT. Over the course of 350 pages, you'll have the chance to go through refresher lessons designed to remind you of the material that will be covered by each section.In this section, you'll learn a lot about the question types and strategies for approaching them, which is an important tool for success. And since the lessons are problem-based, you'll have the chance to test your ability to apply your knowledge to SAT questions at every step of the way. Real student essays are included in the Writing Section chapter to illustrate how essays are scored.
Potential drawbacks: this book lacks a vocabulary list of key words and its lessons are not particularly descriptive, so some students will need more prep beyond this section. But if you already have a good vocabulary and just need a refresher and a few tips for each section, this book is all you need to prepare for the SAT.
Finally, You Test! (and test, and test)
The Official SAT Study Guide contains 8 full-length practice tests that are utterly authentic, as they are made by the makers of the real SAT. This is the bulk of the book - 500 pages total. Obviously, that's more than enough practice testing for any student! I've heard that if you take all of the practice tests in this book and do well, you won't be surprised by anything on your SAT test date.But here's the biggest drawback of the book, and why it lost a star: there aren't detailed answers for the SAT practice tests. Each test comes with an answer list, and that's it - so it can be frustrating to not understand why you've missed a problem.
The College Board does offer book owners a $10 discount to its Official SAT Online Course, where you can buy access to detailed explanations of the practice tests along with other preparation materials. But with a cost of about $70 for 4 months of access, this may not be possible for everyone.
In Short: Good, But Not Perfect
This SAT test prep book is great if you're relatively familiar with the material and just need a refresher, and if you expect that your preparation time will be best served by just taking sample SATs to build your confidence. In that case, this book provides a quick refresher and 8 authentic SATs for you to hone your test-taking skills. But if you want descriptive lessons and explanations of problems, you will probably need to supplement this guide with the College Board's fee-based online course - or another book.