Rocket Review vs. Offical Book

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>I've heard from many people that the Rocket Review is a very reputable source of tests, and when I found the website, I loved the materials. However, something on the site started me: </p>

<p>It said that the Collegeboard's Official test Book's practice sats (which I and many others have been using) DO NOT match the difficult of the actual SAT.
Allegedly, the math section in the Blue book is HARDER; the writer is EQUAL, and the english is EASIER??</p>

<p>Does anyone find truth to this? Or is the Rocket guide only trying to promote their own book?</p>

2

<p>do they offer any proof to back that up? i'd say it sounds pretty hard to believe at first blush. do you have a link to that claim on the rr site?</p>

3

<p>sure: (i'm not sure if you need to be a member to activate the link, but if so, a trial account will let you access it and will only take a minute or two to obtain):</p>

<p><a href="http://rocketreview.com/reviews.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://rocketreview.com/reviews.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>(make sure the Official Guide review, not the dictionary review is highlighted)</p>

<p>I'm not sure how to quote on here (btw, can someone please tell me how to make a quote box), but here it is:</p>

<p>"While I strongly recommend that every SAT student purchase this book, I do so only grudgingly. Its release delayed for months to only days before the PSAT, this book is a huge disappointment on almost every level.</p>

<p>First—and there is no disclosure of this fact anywhere in the book—at least 50 percent of the reading questions, 75 percent of the math problems, and 100 percent of the sentence completions are recycled from the old book, 10 Real SATs. Anyone who purchased 10 Real SATs is being shortchanged, and deprived of the opportunity to do full-length tests (because he or she will have already done most of the questions in this book).</p>

<p>Second, the difficulty of the practice tests in this book is not comparable to that of actual SAT's. The test writers acknowledge this defect only covertly. For example, a student scoring 75 percent correct on a practice SAT Test (on all three sections) is told that the scaled score for this percentage is somewhere between a 1780 and a 2020. That's a whopping 240 point spread, or the difference between a solid score and an excellent one.</p>

<p>My best sense of the eight practice tests in the book, after perusing them thoroughly, is as follows:</p>

<pre><code>* the math sections are harder than those in the new SAT will be.
* the reading sections are somewhat easier than those in the new SAT will be.
* the writing sections are of comparable difficulty to what those in the new SAT will be.
</code></pre>

<p>"</p>

<p>Sorry, I realize my first post may have been a little harsh on the reading-- Rocket does not say it is MUCH easier, but it clearly states it is easier</p>

4

<p>i can't believe he wrote that. the claims about recycling are demonstrably false--go to the searchable version of 10 Real SATs here:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0874476542/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-0830196-5110343#reader-link%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0874476542/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-0830196-5110343#reader-link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>i opened up my blue book at random to a sentence completion question and found number 5 on page 542. I searched the 10RS book for the word "staircase" which appears in the blue book question. it wasn't there. i spot-checked some more questions from that page. none of them were in the 10rs book.</p>

<p>it would be harder to check the 50% and 75% claims about the other sections since i'd actually have to check all the questions in both books, but, as you can see from the above example, it's not true that 100% of the blue book SC questions appeared in 10RS first. at least the ones on page 542 didn't.</p>

<p>it should be noted that the linked review was written before any actual new SATs were ever given. robinson was guessing what the test would look like when it came out in 2005 (that's why he wrote "will be" instead of "is"). he just guessed wrong is all.</p>

5

<p>great observations on the time/ 10 rs!! you;re restoring my confidence in the collegeboard (if that can b possible)</p>

<p>also, im gonna check his claim that the COllegeboard itself says that they don't match the difficulty of the test.. he may be exaggerating that statement.. they prob said they can't guarantee to match it .. or something like that</p>

6

<p>The blue book reuses questions from the 10 real SATs, since at the time it was made, there were no real tests around. Basically, CB added in the writing section, algebra 2 to the math section, and changed the CR section to fit the current format.</p>

7

<p>can you provide examples of questions that appear in both books?</p>

8

<p>now that i'm thinking about it, i doubt the reading comp section is easier ...</p>

9

<p>to quote just

[quote ]
Quote here. [/ quote ]
remove the spaces though..</p>

10

<p>
[quote]
to quote just.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Thanks for clearing that up! (I was practicing) ^</p>

11

<p>bump- no more opinions on the amount of difficulty of the CB blue book adn the actual SAT?</p>

12

<p>The Official CB Book is about as close as you can get (with the exception of Question-Answer Service) to the actual SAT.</p>

13

<p>The blue book was very accurate for me, my actual score was 30 points from my test average.</p>

14

<p>thanks for restoring my hope in the CB; i guess i was getting anxious about nothing</p>

15

<p>yeah. i dunno what robinson was talking about.</p>

16

<p>Also, you have to note that Robinson wrote that in 2004. Since then, much has changed about knowledge on the new SAT and how to study for it.</p>