Kaplan New PSAT/NMSQT Strategies, Practice and Review with 2 Practice Tests: Book + Online (Kaplan Test Prep)

Very thorough review book. Goes through each concept clearly and has lots of practice.

Used to study for the PSAT 2015. My son had no complaints about it. I guess we'll see when the scores come in but he seemed to have an easy time of it.

I am a math tutor in Staten Island, NY, and have been for 35 years. I bought two copies of this book: one for an SAT student of mine and one for myself. The math sections are terrible. There are questions that are poorly worded, so that there is no way to know what the author meant. In these cases I had to look at the answer in order to know what the question really was. This is not helpful for a student working on his/her own. There are other questions that are written correctly, and have beautifully written explanations, BUT THAT ARE INCORRECT! They are answers and explanations for similar problems, but not for the one asked. It got to the point where I couldn't get through even one lesson without losing significant time to these kinds of errors. I had to stop using the book. I have had these problems with Kaplan books for over ten years, and I am now giving up on them. I will not waste my time and money, nor the time and money of my students, on any more Kaplan books. You would think that a company that prints many tens of thousands (I'm guessing) of the same test prep book that is sold all over the country, this year and for the next few years, and I assume makes good money doing so, would want to publish one with good material. I guarantee you that the math sections in this book were not edited by anyone with a masters or Ph.D. in mathematics. It is clear to me after all these years of dealing with this same problem with their SAT prep books, as well as with their h.s. entrance books, that Kaplan doesn't care about the content of their books, their reputation, or the students they are hurting with faulty questions, and wrong answers and explanations. In contrast, I have never found even one error in any College Board book. If there is a mistake or two in a book, I can note them and still use the book; however, the Kaplan books I've used are so riddled with mistakes that they are not good learning tools. It makes me sad to think how many students working on their own with Kaplan prep books have spent their time only to be confused and taught the wrong thing. Kaplan is putting the growth of their bottom line above helping the students who buy their books, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

quality and full of info

Great Product and I like it!

The only reason I am giving this review two stars is because it attempts to help prepare an incoming 11th grader for the PSAT.First off, I noticed a good amount of questions have errors in them including wrong numbering of the lines in the reading section and repeating the same answer choice for letter choices.Also, pertaining to the reading section, there are comparatively difficult words that the book expects you to know, yet the College Board had specifically said that the words would be challenging, but simple enough that the meaning can be determined by the context. However, in the PSAT there is no context when the difficult vocabulary is in the answer choices.The answer explanations in the back of the book are very broad and do not explain why certain answers aren't correct even if they seem to be. This is not as much needed for the math section, but is vital for the reading and writing sections. Some answers are phrased "C summarizes the main idea of the passage" and doesn't even explain what that main idea is.The math content in the book is okay. The questions seem adequate, but the Kaplan Strategy they tell you to do everytime is very contradicting, because they also tell you to spend the smallest amount of time as you can. However, the Kaplan strategy can easily take 2-4 minutes for a question that should only take 1.The grammar section of the book is okay, and explains a good amount of grammatical functions like usage and punctuation as well as misused words.The practice in the book is good enough, but I would highly recommend using the Collegeboard New SAT book to help prepare as it is made by the people who also produce the test and this year, the new SAT coming in March is very similar to the new PSAT. I hope this helped!

My son used this as preparation for the PSAT with an online class. He seemed to do well on the test and was in good spirits upon completion.

Book is excellent and the one practice test in the book is fabulous. Comes with detail explanations. However the online test doesn't exist. It's a ploy to get you to sign up for their online tutoring. I went through several pages of "registering" my book only to discover the resource "is no longer available." Very disappointing.

Good for practice

Very good book. Worth buying