Rating: 
Summary: Hilarious
Review: Great way to learn test-taking skills
Rating: 
Summary: Too many yucks, not enough worthwhile test taking strategies
Review: I agree my fellow reviewer who descrbes this book as LOL -- the only downside is that I'm worried about the SAT, I'm taking it pretty serious, and some of the authors' smug sophomoric jokes get on my nerves. If I want to laugh, I'll watch South Park. If I want to get into college, I'm going to have to study with something better than this.
Rating:
Summary: entertaining does not equal worthwhile
Review: I bought the book before the first time i took the SATs and although it is a funny and entertaining one, my score came out to be a 1280. The only thing it has going for it is the vocabulary and it is nothing that you cant find someplace else. The second time i took the SAT's i read Kaplans Writing book and memorized around 500 of the most tricky words, and bought ETS' 10 real SATS and took the practice exams. My score came out to be a 1420 the second time. Bottom line: if you want real results, sit through a serious book and bear with it and you will be happy with your results.
Rating: 
Summary: Not serious enough
Review: I bought the book before the first time i took the SATs and although it is a funny and entertaining one, my score came out to be a 1280. The only thing it has going for it is the vocabulary and it is nothing that you cant find someplace else. The second time i took the SAT's i read Kaplans Writing book and memorized around 500 of the most tricky words, and bought ETS' 10 real SATS and took the practice exams. My score came out to be a 1420 the second time. Bottom line: if you want real results, sit through a serious book and bear with it and you will be happy with your results.
Rating: 
Summary: Perfect for teens with a low tolerance for boredom
Review: I bought this book for my son who quickly loses patience with "boring" study guides. Even I found it funny in an irreverent sort of way, so I knew he would get a kick out if it. To make a long story short, it works! He found this book to be incredibly useful on the verbal sections as well as entertaining, and he felt a lot more confident about the test when he took it. He did say that if he followed the book's advice and also used the "10 Real SATs" from the College Board (which I also bought for him), along with this book, he thinks he could have done even better than he did. He did say the math section seemed a little thin but he still learned the techniques that helped him save time and reduced the "anxiety" factor that's been of his biggest problems on standardized tests. We will buy the new edition of UP Your Score before he takes the SATs again in October 2000.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good
Review: I found that this book was written pretty well, however the math section is completely lacking. It does not get in depth in enough and the inane tricks and explantions were quite annoying. However, on the reverse side, the verbal section is great. The vocabulary words will give you an excellent start, and the tips are worthwhile. The frivolous comments in all sections were sometimes irritating, but I am just a serious person, so it may not irritate some of you. One last note, for the verbal section use Norman Lewis' Word Power Made Easy in combination with the vocab in this book, in addition to improving your vocabulary, it will give you tremendous edge over the students who have not read it.
Rating:
Summary: I got a perfect on the SAT 2 writting
Review: I got a 1320 on the SAT... didnt study and didnt care.. i was still going to get into Cal anyway with my 4.7 gpa. But for the heck of it I bought this book and used it on the SAT 2 writing test.. That was a fine day. A 700 in us history, a 750 on the Ic... and a perfect on the writing test. thanks
Rating:
Summary: Occasionally funny, but more or less a waste of money
Review: I got this book hoping for some new insight and ideas. After all, it's written by people with 1550s and above, it must be good, right? The concepts presented, especially in the math section, were dummed-down basic 8th grade algebra and a little 9th grade geometry. The verbal section was slightly more helpful, and the list of words to learn is nice, but many of the definitions are incomplete (it's hard to learn a word as well as you need to know it for the SAT from a definition and a sentence, to be fair). Some of the additional advice is useful, and the section on guessing provides some interesting insight and results of original experiments, but it wasn't enough to recommend this book. Finally, much of the advice was incredibly stupid (suggesting that one skip the last reading passage because it's hard and you'll have more time for the other problems). I will say that I didn't find a single factual mistake in the entire book. If you're getting below 1000 composite on the SAT, this book may be for you, but if you're in the 1200-1300 or above range, this isn't worth the time or money.
Rating:
Summary: Great book.
Review: I highly recommend this book. Many high school juniors/seniors find it difficult to put the effort into studying for the SATs. The Underground Guide to the SATs makes that task tolerable at least and very enjoyable at best. Four years later, I still use the tips, tricks and vocabulary memorization techniques I learned from the book in my schoolwork in college. My score on the SATs improved from 1170 to 1360. You won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Great for SAT Prep!
Review: I highly recommend Up Your Score for students trying to improve their SAT scores. It is very easy to read and extremely informative. The authors write it from a student's perspective, and include some humorous and light-hearted comments. Excellent strategies are included for sentence completions, analogies, and critical reading sections. There is also an exhaustive vocabulary list for those students willing to increase their vocabulary. The math sections are also worthwhile. Unlike other SAT prep books, this book is readable and not formidable like many other huge SAT prep books that weigh a ton! Great job done by these authors!
| 
