<p>Has any one tried out the new ACT prep book called “Dissecting the ACT”? I previewed it on Amazon at:</p>
<p>It is written by two high school students who have done very well on the ACT.</p>
<p>If any one has tried this book, please post a review.</p>
<p>I would not get these books written by students. A friend of mine had an SAT book written by six former high school students, now in Cornell, Harvard, and Yale. You would think that these kids know what they're talking about.</p>
<p>The book was terrible. It was terribly written, didn't really teach much it just gave tricks, and most of them didn't even make sense.</p>
<p>I have the Real ACT book (red) and princeton review cracking the ACT. They are both amazing. You should always have one official and one non-official book. You should use the non-official book to learn concepts and understand how the questions and answers are written, but when you want to take practice tests, you should only use official tests.</p>
<p>I bought this book and used it to prepare for the April 4th ACT. I think that this book is excellent. The authors used real tests to figure out what stuff is tested often on the real ACT and made an easy to use summary of these topics. The English section of this book is particularly good. It has the best explanation of when to use who and whom that I have seen, for example, and outlines only the key concepts that you need for the test, nothing more, nothing less. The math section has an excellent list of all the concepts you need to know for the ACT math. It even covers some topics (like logic) not addressed in the Princeton Review and Kaplan books that I have seen on real ACT tests. </p>
<p>The reading and science strategies in the book are very simple but effective. In fact, I used the reading and science strategies on April 4th test and was able to finish these two sections for the first time. </p>
<p>There are very insightful explanations of all the questions in the official practice ACT test in the Preparing for the ACT from the test makers. The explanations go beyond just addressing the questions, and teach you how the test makers expect you to think.</p>
<p>Bottom line: Highly recommended. Very easy to use and understand and based on real test material. No fake test questions. The book tells you how to get three free real ACT tests and recommends that you get the Real ACT Prep Guide as a companion to this book for additional practice tests. The Real ACT Prep Guide is not very good for content and strategy but has good practice tests with explanations. Dissecting the ACT fills in the main weakness of the official red book and is a real steal for what it offers.</p>
<p>Update:</p>
<p>Using the reading and science strategies in this book, I was able to finish the April ACT test for the first time. Got my scores back last week and I got a 36 composite!</p>
<p>I was stuck at a 32 composite before. I had 34-35 in English and Math, but would get low 30s or high 20s in the Reading and Science because I could not finish those sections.</p>
<p>test…</p>