Rating: 
Summary: 700+ SAT/SAT II Scores ARE Possible
Review: (...)Do books like this help? When I attended a decent public high school, we were told that outside preparation was a good way to spend a lot of time and money on statistically insignificant returns. This doesn't bother private high school students I've met recently. I don't know if preparation has improved, or if the "cost" side of cost/benefit inhibits them less. Familiarity with the format and grounding in tactics has got to be worth something. I think Lance Armstrong likes to ride the course before the Tour de France starts. His margin of victory is statistically insignificant, but it seems to work for him. In rebuttal to another reviewer's comments: You *can* improve your ability to write essays (assuming there's room for improvement to begin with). I'm coaching a student whose essays just improved dramatically after she studied the tactics recommended by the Princeton book (e.g. add some literary or historical references). Of course some essay topics are easy to get one's teeth into, others are intractable, and we can't tell how she'll feel about the one the test puts in front of her--but she has a better template to work with than she did before. Not bad, eh? I think I tossed this together in 20 minutes or less, with an illustrative reference to sports! I've had more practice than my student, but improvement is possible!
Rating: 
Summary: sat 2 writing
Review: Barron's SAT II book is alright. This book contains five sample tests, which are not entirely like the actual SAT 2 writing tests. Foremost, the sections in which one must improve paragraphs are not very good. Yet the improving sentences sections are good overall, while the identifying sentence errors sections are alright. Additionally, I found that the questions were somewhat more difficult that the actual exam's qeustions are. I feel that I benefited more from the 1 Writing Test in "Real SAT 2: Subject Tests" by the College Board than from all of the tests in this book. In conclusion, I would probably not have purchased this book if another had been available. This book's section on writing sample essays is better than the multiple choice sections.
Rating:
Summary: Needs improved editing
Review: Barron's SAT II Writing covers the basic topics on the SAT II. Its essay writing sugesstions are beneficial and useful; however, the five practice tests in the back of the book are flawed. The practice tests contain typos that greatly confuse the reader. In a few cases the book stated the answer as one thing and then had a different answer for the same question in anonther location. After taking the writing test four times (twice on the PSAT and twice on the real SAT II), I feel that many of the practice questions that Barron's offers are not similar to ones found on the test. However, if one really needs help with the SAT II Writing then Barron's will provide limited help; just don't always believe the book is correct. Personally, I prefered Kaplan's guide to the SAT II Writing.
Rating:
Summary: Solid Prep--Harder Questions than the Test's
Review: I believe that the best way to prepare for tests that don't involve a specific curriculum is taking practice tests. Having a thorough background in the material, I originally chose this book because it included more full-length tests. I didn't really use the review sections of this book, but what I did see seemed complete. As I said, I focused on the practice tests, which provide excellent preparation for the actual SAT II. The Barron's questions are harder than the ones in the exam and include more sophisticated concepts. If you keep that in mind while using the book (don't get discouraged by underwhelming performances), Barron's provides thorough preparation.
Rating:
Summary: Probably the best one can do on paper
Review: I bought the 2nd edition of this books. It's very good, but alone it is certainly not enough to prepare you for the test. The first fault is traditionally Barron's -- it won't tell you how to get a scaled score from raw result. The 2nd fault is to do with the fact that it's a book -- a book can't score your essay. I used this book in conjuctions with CB's EssayPrep (3 essay evaluations by real rating people), and it helped a lot -- I'm not a native speaker of English, and I got 740, which I was pleased with. This doesn't mean that the essay section of the book is bad -- it's actually very good -- before doing SAT II Writing, I used it to prepare for the TOEFL essay, and it helped a lot. Also, it's important to actually practice writing the essay on the limited space of paper that you'll be provided during the essay. It's not the same as typing your essay into a computer, and it does hurt your score if you're not prepared. Before spending money on EssayPrep, do however all the practice exercises in this book, as they are good, and useful.
Tiny drawback: the essay form is lined, the real SAT one is not. You may want to try essaying on a non-lined piece of paper.
Otherwise the book is great. It covers very well the questions, and presents difficult questions, as well as easy ones. It teaches you how to solve the questions, and a little smart tactics, not answer-sheet magic. I have found it very well-explained, and logical. I enjoyed the identifying sentence error section a lot -- it seemed to me it provided correct, and detailed explanations.
Sometimes, I felt the more obscure corners of Paragraph Improvement weren't fully covered, but long paragraphs (e.g. TOEFL reading comprehension) were always a little more ambiguous to me. I still think the definitive book on Reading Comprehension, and long paragraph matter hasn't been written yet. P.S. I just wanted to add -- the essay section is very good. I only realised this after I got the chance to compare it with Barron's TOEFL Essay book (I'll review that soon). The author style on writing is very good, and besides teaching you the right things, is in itself a good example of essay writing (what's the point of having a super-authority on essaying explain you how to write an essay in dry, lame, poorly structured paragraphs?). The essay section is quite short, but is certainly filled with useful info, including the paragraph on "narrowing the topic mercifully" -- this single half-page helped me more than all the other essay material I've read.
Rating: 
Summary: Sat 2 Writing
Review: I did not start reviewing for this test until two weeks before the test date. So I turned to this book, and I learned many good strategies for essay writing and about sentence structure. Going into this, I thought I probably wouldn't do too well; I struggled on the writing section of the PSAT. But I did pretty well on the practice test in the Real SAT 2 book and then I got a 750 on the actual test. So I suppose that something must have gone right.
Rating: 
Summary: It Should Be Called, "How NOT to Prepare"
Review: I excel in writing and thus was eager to sit for the SAT II subject in writing. I had no preperation and scored a 790. I wanted that 800, so I bought this book. I took the tests in it and found the questions ambiguous and just dumb. My grade fluctuated wildly. This book, as some of my fellow reviewers have said, has bad examples of those problems that appear on the SAT II test. I SUGGEST THAT YOU NOT BUY THIS BOOK. An excellent book is the Princeton Review book, "Cracking the SAT II: Writing" also available on Amazon.com
Rating:
Summary: Sat 2 Writing
Review: I found that this book was very informative. I especially liked the practice tests at the end as well. I am doing my SAt in October 03 and now feel extremly confident in doing the exam with the aid of this book. The Barrons book for literature is also handy as well!!!! I would recoomend this book to everyone
Rating:
Summary: Sat 2 Writing
Review: I found that this book was very informative. I especially liked the practice tests at the end as well. I am doing my SAt in October 03 and now feel extremly confident in doing the exam with the aid of this book. The Barrons book for literature is also handy as well!!!! I would recoomend this book to everyone
Rating:
Summary: Something extra
Review: I got this book for my high school teenager as a supplement to the Kaplan Guide in order to provide more practice tests. But this Barron's book included a bonus.
It provides a scale for the number of correct answers needed in the multiple choice section for different levels of achievement, e.g. excellent, better, good etc. This was missing from the Kaplan book. Although it does not provide a translation to the scaled scores, it is still a helpful tool to know what specific number of right answers a test taker needs to meet their goal. For example, the book says that an excellent score is no more than 5 missed answers on the multiple choice section (with a detailed breakdown in each of the 3 subsections). That's what we focused on: correcting common errors to get the score within that range. The official score report we received showed only 5 missed answers and translated that to a score of 79 out of 80 on that part of the exam. In my mind, that validates the book's scale. The review material in both the Kaplan guide and this Barron's guide are excellent and equivalent. I am glad my "scholar" used both books. But if I had to recommend only one, I would recommend the Barron's.
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