The title says it all. This is the worst SAT prep book I’ve reviewed to date.

A lot of the introductory material that can be found in the College Board “Blue Book” is also in SAT For Dummies, 8th edition, by Geraldine Woods et al. That’s the best thing I can say about the book.

Organization

576 pages

Introduction – SAT vs. ACT, about special needs students, what’s on the test, about scores

Information on section types

5 practice tests

More advice

The book is available with and without a CD, which includes vocabulary, 2 more tests, some essay prompts, and some basics from the book.

Pros

This makes an excellent gag gift for your favorite SAT teacher.

Cons

Very few strategies are given, and those are often poorly explained. Mostly, unrealistic example questions are presented, followed merely by explanations of why the answer is right.

There are many errors in this book.

The tests are some of the most unrealistic ones I’ve seen (even the wrong vocabulary words are tested – i.e. those not on the SAT).

The book without the CD has no vocabulary section.

Overview

This book probably sells reasonably well, because it’s part of the immensely popular “For Dummies” series. The idea of simple self-help books that don’t talk over reader’s heads is a great one. However, this book is useless for the reasons mentioned above.

I don’t want to rant too long, but here are a couple of examples of this book’s flaws:

There is no mention of plugging in, or many other useful math techniques that are found in most other SAT guides. To be fair, backsolving is mentioned.

The section on Sentence Completions begins with an explanation of what the questions entail, and a description of one- and two-blank questions (hint: one type has two blanks). But NO strategies for actually solving them are given. Instead, the author dives right into example questions (and poorly written ones at that), and merely explains why the answers are right. As I’ve already mentioned, this pattern is repeated throughout the book.

Here’s one of the sentences:

Although she was upset by the security guard’s close attention and stormed out of the lingerie store, Suzy Sunshine remained _______ for the rest of the day:

(A) braless
(B) serene
(C) annoyed
(D) joyful
(E) hungry

According to the author, the answer is (B). Of course, (D) is a perfectly valid answer, although (A) is my personal favorite.

No links for this one. Don’t buy it.

Ugh.