Description:
It's an established truth that your SAT scores will improve significantly through learning the strategies, familiarizing yourself with the structure, and practicing the skills. It remains only to find a good SAT source, sit yourself down, and get cracking. Kaplan SAT & PSAT 1999 is a good guide to these tests for a number of reasons. For one thing, Kaplan has been in the business of helping students prepare for standardized tests since the 1930s, so they have some experience in what you need to learn and how best to impart that information. Also, they know a little about high school students, so the text is written with students' study habits, preferences, and concerns in mind. For each test section, there are plenty of practice questions, followed by a discussion of why the right answer is right, the wrong answers are wrong, and how best to arrive there. They teach paraphrasing skills, skimming, and quantitative comparisons. They instruct how to prepare if you've started months in advance, and what you can learn if you've waited till the last minute. With additional chapters on stress management systems, study aids, and college-admission essays, Kaplan provides a great service to the college-bound student. Kaplan explains how the SAT doesn't measure intelligence (doesn't even accurately predict college performance) but does measure test-taking skills (with some verbal and mathematical prerequisite knowledge, to be sure). And the more preparation and study you pursue, the more these skills improve, while pretest panic and anxiety plummet. --Stephanie Gold
| 
