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Rating: 
Summary: Mostly Common Sense!
Review: I purchased this book to help me prepare for the SAT I. I have always been good in school math classes, but the SAT I promotes speed and guessing over meticulous work, so I decided to give this book a try, as I was constantly running out of time on practice exams. Much to my dismay, most of the "shortcuts" found in this book are common sense to most 11th graders, and nearly anyone who has taken elementary high school math. I did not find any of the shortcuts to be helpful. If you are a 500-550 math student, then this may be the book for you. For anyone aiming for a 650-700 or higher, this book is worthless. Nearly all of the shortcuts found in this book are also found in any decent SAT prep book, such as Barron's How to Prepare for the SAT I. Barron's provides more tactics, more (and better) practice problems, and costs about the same. If you think there are any shortcuts in this book that are worth the price, you will be severely dissapointed.
Rating: 
Summary: It is amazing
Review: If i had to use one word to describe this book it would be "amazing." Undeniably the BEST book I have ever come across. I saw A LOT of the tricks in this book being used in Kaplan and Princeton! I LOVED IT! It raised my score over 200 points. I would definately recommend this to anyone shooting for a 750 or up....
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible book
Review: This book offered 34 "shortcuts," most of which are common sense. After reading this book, I took a practice test, only to find that it improved my score by 20 points (from 670-690). If you are scoring around a 500 or a 600 in the math section, then this book is for you, It my boost you score by a hundred points. But otherwise, this book will not help you. It certainly does not help the reader to "ace" the Math section (Waste of time and money). I reccomend some intensive preperation books such as Barrons.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible book
Review: This book offered 34 "shortcuts," most of which are common sense. After reading this book, I took a practice test, only to find that it improved my score by 20 points (from 670-690). If you are scoring around a 500 or a 600 in the math section, then this book is for you, It my boost you score by a hundred points. But otherwise, this book will not help you. It certainly does not help the reader to "ace" the Math section (Waste of time and money). I reccomend some intensive preperation books such as Barrons.
Rating:
Summary: Great Help for SAT
Review: This is a very well understood and clearly written book. It helped me greatly for the SAT and it will definetely help you. I give it a 5 star rating. And it also has a great price tag!
Rating:
Summary: This book is a winner!
Review: To help my nephew prepare for the SAT, I bought several products: Math Shortcuts to Ace the SAT by Achievement Publishing, Cracking the SAT by Princeton Review, Kaplan's SAT Online training program (by far, the most expensive), and last-year's Kaplan SAT CD software. The best products by far were Cracking the SAT (Princeton Review) and Math Shortcuts to Ace the SAT. Math Shortcuts to Ace the SAT is a short, quick read of 34 tips with related examples. (By the way, don't take the title LITERALLY. You probably won't "ace" the SAT. It's a common practice to tout a book by giving it an ambitious title.) I didn't care for Kaplan's math format at all. Cracking the SAT (Princeton Review) was easier to understand and gave clearer tips to crack the hard problems, but Math Shortcuts... was easiest of all to learn. It's barely 100 pages, far less intimidating than the other books. I was able to read it and do all the examples in two evening sessions. I took a sample SAT myself and scored in the low to mid 600s in math and verbal, but I'd didn't have a clue how to solve some of the math questions. (By the way, "Cracking the SAT" (Princeton Review) explains why the harder questions are things you'll never see in high school math classes.) After reading Math Shortcuts, I retested on the last five of twenty-five questions on two sample math sections to see how I improved. As you know, the last questions are always the hardest. On these 10 hardest questions, before reading Math Shortcuts, I got 3 correct, 3 wrong, and 4 that I didn't attempt. After reading Math Shortcuts, I got 10 correct. I doubt that I could get a perfect score consistently, but the book obviously helped me. Since there are three math sections (not just two), my math score would probably have improved by over 100 points. (However, I took a lot of math in college and use it at work, so my results might not reflect that of the typical high school student.) My nephew confirmed that he liked Math Shortcuts to Ace the Sat best of all. After studying the book, he took a sample SAT and increased his math score 90 points. He found Kaplan's SAT online to be the least useful of all. In summary, I'd highly recommend Math Shortcuts to Ace the SAT by Achievement Publishing to improve SAT math scores. For verbal and overall study, I'd recommend Cracking the SAT by Princeton Review. It does a good job of explaining how and when to guess and how the SAT is scored. Its explanations of how crack analogies was clearer than Kaplan. Its grouping of common SAT vocabulary words into common categories was far superior to Kaplain's memorization approach. One final warning to parents. Don't expect your kids to do well on the SAT because they are good students. The SAT doesn't measure that. Get them some good study resources a few months before the test; otherwise, your student will be handicapped when he/she takes the SAT compared to students who have used good resources.
Rating: 
Summary: An innovative & unique SAT Math supplement
Review: Traditional SAT Math prep. includes: math review, practice SAT's, guestimation & general strategies. My book supplements these 4 approaches with 34 specific SAT math shortcuts & strategies.
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