This really help student increase their SAT score by 20 points at least!

This really help student increase their SAT score by 20 points at least!  Read Less

I've been a professional tutor for many years, and I've been running a tutoring company for the better part of a decade. We're ...  Read More

I've been a professional tutor for many years, and I've been running a tutoring company for the better part of a decade. We're all scrambling to find the best review book for the redesigned SAT. Thus far, nothing has proven exceptional, but this book is leading the pack, for now. As any good tutor will tell you, the first book you purchase should always be the official exams from the test maker: in this case The Official SAT Study Guide, 2016 Edition. However, these 4 exams (plus two more) are also available for free on the College Board's web site.The strength of this book is the 6 practice exams it includes, complete with answer explanations. Because there are only 6 real exams currently available from the College Board, practice exams are still a valuable component of new SAT prep books. In a few years when more exams are released, prep company exams will be irrelevant because tutors will already have access to tens of real exams, as is the case with the ACT and the old SAT.As for the negatives: However, many of our tutors and students find the Kallis practice tests more difficult than the actual College Board exams, particularly the reading sections. The answer explanations are often extremely short and sometimes lacking, a critical oversight common to most prep books.The lessons chapters of the book are fairly robust. However, typically only two or three sample questions are included with each concept, making targeted practice of weak areas more difficult for students. We are still looking for alternative books to find one which can fill this role the way 5 lb. Book of ACT Practice Problems does beautifully for the ACT. Right now we are sampling The New SAT: 1,500+ Practice Questions, and we will post our review shortly.Please feel free to reach out to us by googling Elite Ivy Tutors if you have any further questions about test prep. We will be starting a blog soon which compares prep books and also offers general testing tips.[NOTE: below I detail a more specific gripe I have with the book. It's very long and only relevant for professional tutors and overachieving students.]A more specific flaw is that the Kallis grammar lessons go into too much depth. As a grammar nerd I love it, but as a tutor I recognize that it's a waste from a test perspective. I actually feel that most prep books (and tutors) don't go into enough depth: they fail to identify essential jargon like independent clauses, run-on sentences, etc.However, Kallis goes the other way -- preferable to the alternative, but not optimal. Not every grammar rule is tested on the SAT, and only questions with one DEFINITIVE answer can be tested. Therefore, recommended best practices for writing and GENERALITIES are irrelevant. A few examples:- On page 77, discussing semicolons, Kallis says that it's usually preferable to use a FANBOYS conjunction instead of a semi-colon if the relationship between the independent clauses is not SELF-EVIDENT. This is a good guideline for your high school English class, but completely irrelevant for the SAT and can only lead to confusion and overthinking. In all my years of tutoring, I've never once seen a test question from the College Board (or ACT) which asks you to choose between a semi-colon or FANBOYS conjunction for a correct answer. The College Board can't ask you whether two clauses are sufficiently self-evidently related that a semi-colon would be preferred to a semi-colon. It can only ask questions which have an unequivocal correct answer: all incorrect choices must be DEFINITIVELY wrong.The simple lesson is that, for SAT purposes, semi-colons are IDENTICAL to periods. If a period is correct, so is a semi-colon, and vice versa. It's that simple. (Obviously the word following a semi-colon is not capitalized, but this hardly needs mentioning.) If a random student approached me on the street and asked for one SAT tip, my response would be just that: Semi-colons are IDENTICAL to periods. That one easy-to-remember sentence will earn you 20-30 SAT points immediately, without any studying. I even tell students they can cross out semi-colons and turn them into periods on the writing section.To add a little more jargon and elaboration to the Kallis discussion, the point is that two independent clauses can be joined by a semi-colon or a FANBOYS conjunction. There's no need to distinguish between the two options.- On page 79, discussing the different ways to form appositives, Kallis says that em dashes are used for EMPHASIS and parentheses for SUBTLETY. (Commas are not even mentioned in this section, though they should be.) While interesting and true, this point is also irrelevant for the SAT.The point is that em dashes, parentheses and commas can all be used to create appositives, and all are EQUALLY correct. All three below are correct:The SAT tutor (an Ivy League graduate) was never late.The SAT tutor, an Ivy League graduate, was never late.The SAT tutor - an Ivy League graduate - was never late.The SAT will often give an incorrect choice which is wrong because it mixes and matches punctuation, using a comma and an em dash, for example.The SAT tutor, an Ivy League graduate - was never late. (WRONG)- On page 72, discussing comparative words, Kallis says MOST words with two or more syllables are preceded by more or most (as opposed to adding -est or -er)True? Yes. Interesting? Definitely. Irrelevant? Yes. First, students may become confused by trying to apply this tendency as a rule that has many exceptions (easier, noisier, etc.). Kallis does technically specify that the syllable guideline is only true most of the time, but that won't stop students from getting unnecessarily confused. There's no value in teaching that guideline because students will never be asked to construct the comparison themselves from scratch; they will never need to choose between more clear and clearer, for example. (In this case, both are technically correct, so a testmaker could never ask this.)The relevant test taker point is really that comparisons are formed by either adding the word more / most / etc. or by adding the -er / -est ending, but NEVER both. For example, one question from a real exam gives the choicesA. far more busierB. far busierC. more busierD. most busiestStudents following the Kallis guideline might be tempted to choose A, C or D by thinking that busy has two syllables and thus likely uses more/most in its comparison form.  Read Less