The Official SAT Study Guide

This is an excellent guide for the SAT!
The content is thorough and very helpful.

I thought this is a straight forward book. It provides lots of examples but it is hard to sometimes learn from each questions (students I find keep making the same mistakes over and over).

Also, from the test maker I would like to see some more free material since they are making lots of money off of each student that takes the exam. If you are going to pay for a book, check out rocket revolution or Gruber's book for great material.

This book, obviously, is massive. I personally did not find almost anything in the whole of the book, very helpful. It is so wordy and vague at parts that it is very easy to lose interest. I highly suggest one of the test prep companies SAT books. I have ones from Kaplan and Barron's and they are much, much more helpful, and are more to the point.

At first I honestly didn't want this book AT ALL! but my parents thought that I should use it to get me prepared for the SATs. I went through it and it really helped, it told me what the questions would be like and what to expect. It was pretty useful to me but what works for me doesn't neccessarily work for everyone else.

Like all things associated with the collegeboard these days, their "Official" SAT Study Guide leaves much to be desired in a test prep book, yet because it is the only book with real SAT tests, it's really the only one I would recommend for students to use.

I've been teaching SAT prep for 20 years, and the subtle differences between the real test questions and those made up in publishers' cubicles do translate into better prep for students. The SAT is hard enough without having to suffer the fact that the practice questions you may be working on are not exactly what you will see on the real test. The research and development that the SAT does on test questions provides consistency that other publishers just can't match.

With 8 complete tests included, the Official SAT Guide provides more than enough material for aspiring students, and the tutorials in the front of the book are good enough to help most motivated kids. The weakness of the book is the lack of explanations to go with the answers. One can buy the "SAT Solutions Manual for over $20, but that really is irresponsible on the part of the publishers, or a boondoggle that isn't fair to the consumers. For heaven's sake, include the explanations... isn't hundreds of millions a year enough profit?

But that's the CollegeBoard!

Robert Sposato
Eugene, Oregon