McGraw-Hill's 12 SAT Practice Tests

McGraw-Hill publishes the largest set of SAT practice tests, with twelve full practice SAT exams available in one book. This book also includes PSAT reviews and practice test material, making it an ideal book for a student in high school preparing to take the PSAT and, eventually, the SAT exam itself.

McGraw-Hill's 12 SAT Practice Tests provides tons of test-taking practice and questions intended to improve your test-taking skills, increase your knowledge of SAT test material, increase testing confidence, and tactics that will reduce the stress of practicing for the SAT test. The practice tests put together by some of the country's best test-prep coaches will prepare students for the types of questions on the actual SAT exam. The practice tests in this book are set up exactly like the SAT test itself, so they also teach you to budget your testing time for each unique test section.

Each new edition of McGraw-Hill's 12 SAT Practice Tests includes 12 complete sample SAT exams (including complete explanations for each answer, not just an answer guide) plus a full sample PSAT exam. Like other SAT strategy guides, McGraw-Hill's 12 SAT Practice Tests contains testing strategies for the SAT including a lengthy review section for the student-written essay portion, worksheets with scoring charts to help students calculate their actual equivalent SAT cumulative score and score for each test section, and access to a host online test prep material and an online practice test.

At just under 700 pages, McGraw-Hill's version of the ubiquitous SAT prep material is smaller than The College Board and Princeton Review study guides, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. McGraw-Hill's 12 SAT Practice Tests puts an emphasis on SAT-style test questions and answers with full explanations rather than cramming in a few hundred extra pages of test-taking strategies.

McGraw-Hill's 12 SAT Practice Test - Pros and Cons

Unfortunately for students looking for help on the mathematics portions of the SAT, McGraw-Hill's SAT study guide is a more useful resource for Critical Reading and Writing. Many reviewers complain that the math portion of McGraw-Hill's book is not very similar to actual math questions on the SAT, and that some answers and explanations are misleading or downright incorrect. Later printings of McGraw-Hill's 12 SAT Practice Tests have corrected some errors.

What the Critical Reading and Writing sections do well is to over teach the concepts necessary for a high score on these two sections of the SAT. Students who do well on McGraw-Hill's Reading and Writing sections can expect to perform even better on the real SAT exam portions, since the material included in McGraw-Hill's books is considerably more difficult than what The College Board includes on the SAT exam. The review sections and sample essays intended to improve student's performance on the essay portion of the SAT are very much in line with material students will be faced with on SAT test day, and includes strategies on writing a high-scoring essay that are comparable with other top-notch SAT prep guides.

Students preparing for the SAT find McGraw-Hill's concise explanations of the meanings and usage of SAT vocabulary words much more helpful than those provided by Tutor Ted's SAT Guide or the Barron's guide to SAT vocabulary. There may not be as many SAT vocabulary words in McGraw-Hill's books as other SAT test prep books, but the material here is designed to help you think about SAT vocabulary words in such a way that you understand their meaning in context.

The book's authors advertise that the material in McGraw-Hill's 12 SAT Practice Tests will help you "Watch your scores improve from one practice test to the next--and get ready to do your very best on the real exam." With 12 complete sample SAT exams, expert advise and explanations for every question and answer, and a complete study guide and practice PSAT exam, you can use McGraw-Hill's 12 SAT Practice Tests to help you brush up on your SAT skills before test day.

No single book on the market contains more practice tests than this SAT prep book published by McGraw-Hill. Use this book in combination with other well-reviewed SAT prep books and you'll have put together the ideal SAT and PSAT study guide. Taking all 12 of the practice SAT tests found in McGraw-Hill's 12 SAT Practice Tests will help students learn the kinds of questions asked on the real SAT, how the SAT is structured, and important lessons in time-budgeting.