Cracking the ACT, 2009 Edition (College Test Preparation),   ISBN:9780375428999

Customer Rating: 

The strategies provided are downright awful. After reading the ACT reading section in the book, i felt that their way of doing it was shaky, and what do you know. I took it and scored 5 LOWER on the reading, my science score went DOWN 1, and the others stayed the same. Score went from a 26 to a 25. Had I just stuck to my old strategies, I wouldn't be missing out on a $8,000 scholarship and ability to attend an honors college that I am now. I honestly couldn't be any more disappointing with this book. Do not buy it. It is a waste of time.

Customer Rating: 

I feel like I have been through nearly every ACT prep product sold on Amazon. I have been working to get a 99th percentile ACT score without spending big bucks on private tutoring or a prep class. I figured I should post a review with my feelings about these products to prevent other students from having to do all the shopping around that I did.

I used this book, The Real ACT Prep Guide: The Only Official Prep Guide From The Makers Of The ACT,Boost Your Score! The Unofficial Software Guide to the Real ACT,The ACT For Dummies, a Kaplan book, and McGraw-Hill's 10 ACT Practice Tests, Second Edition (McGraw-Hill's 10 Practice Acts) I took the test in June and September and I have been studying since last December.

Here is how I felt about this book. Overall, I thought the strategies were great. This book focuses a lot on sneaky strategies, such as how to eliminate wrong answer choices even if you don't know how to solve a problem. For example, they teach you how to eliminate answers to the reading passages that are just too friendly or a little too extreme. They also teach you a lot of good strategies for the math section, like how to eyeball diagrams and work backwards from the answer choices.

However, I would have liked to see more practice material. I also found that the practice tests seemed MUCH easier than the actual ACT tests. After skimming other buyers' reviews, I see that many others agree with me on this point. I think that anyone preparing for the ACT can't just use this book and be fully prepared. I felt most confident using this book for the strategies, but also focusing on the materials out there that use official ACTs. Aside from this book, the products I found most helpful were the The Real ACT Prep Guide: The Only Official Prep Guide From The Makers Of The ACT and Boost Your Score! The Unofficial Software Guide to the Real ACT since those are products that use official ACTs. After learning the strategies in this book, taking the real ACTs in the Prep Guide, and working through the resources in the Boost Your Score software, I got a 34 on the September test.

Customer Rating: 

As a person who teaches two AP Physics classes and uses these books I gave my son this book to prepare for his ACT. The practice tests he had no trouble with and scored 34 composite. On the actual test the questions on the math sections were wildly harder (and contained errors) and the English tests were wildly different in type and format.

The troubles he had are coming from a person who already has 5s on the Calculus exams and 800 SAT so I don't think he was unprepared. The errors on the math test and in the book slowed him down some, but the Enblish test being totally unlike what was in the prep book made him just mad.

Customer Rating: 

I bought the 2009 edition. Just did the first practice exam. There are so many errors in the questions and answers, especially the answers and the science section. I can NOT believe it. Never used a book has so many errors! Haven't read the context yet. But already disappointed enough!!

Customer Rating: 

The strength of this book is in the chapters that cover strategy and content for the English and Math sections of the ACT. These sections are quite useful. These two sections alone are good enough reasons to buy this book. There are still some Math and English topics that I have seen on real tests that are missing from this book, but the most important concepts in this section are covered well. The rest of the book however is not very useful, in my opinion.

The reading strategy is quite strange and I can not see how it would work. The recommended reading strategy is quite complicated and involves underlining and scribbling. All of this is unnecessary and simpler reading strategies will probably work better. There is no shortcut to reading and understanding the passage. The biggest issue with the ACT reading is speed. Underlining and scribbling will only waste time. I got a perfect 36 on the ACT Reading using a much simpler strategy.

The science strategies are also unnecessarily complex. As with the reading, speed is the biggest issue with this section. Complex strategies are likely to slow you down. What you need are strategies that increase your speed. You will not find any in this book.

The practice tests in the book are not like the real thing. I have seen many real ACT tests before I wrote DISSECTING THE ACT 2.0: ACT TEST PREPARATION ADVICE OF A PERFECT SCORER or ACT TEST PREP WITH REAL ACT QUESTIONS and I think that time is best spent practicing with real tests from the test maker. No one else can make the scientifically validated questions like the test makers.

Although there is a new addition of the book every year, nothing of significance changes in the book. The book has not changed much in the last few years. Also, the version of the book with the DVD is not worth the extra money. You can save money and get a used version of the book from last year.