McGraw-Hill's SAT Subject Test: Chemistry, 2ed,   ISBN:9780071608848

Customer Rating: 

I am a science teacher who has successfully prepared students for the Chemistry SAT2 for years. This book is not the greatest for its review of the material, but it is enormously helpful for its practice tests, of which there are five.

There are some typos in the tests, as well as some irrelevant/bad questions, but taking five (timed!) practice tests before the chem exam will really help you on test day. Another thing to keep in mind is that the real ETS exam will use more easily crunchable numbers since you can't use a calculator, so don't be frustrated if these tests require a few extra minutes of math (the numbers are usually a little unwieldy).

Supplement with Barron's Regents Review of Chem (the blue book...tons of multiple choice questions) and Princeton Review's Cracking the SAT2 and you'll be in good shape for the test (make sure you get a copy of the latest released SAT2 from ETS/The College Board, too. That is the most reliable indicator of how you'll do on the real thing).

Good luck!

Customer Rating: 

There is simply too much fluff and too many errors for me to take this book seriously. I fell for a good review off another site of this book and while I admit it isn't generic and easy (Priceton Review) or long-winded and overly difficult (Kaplan), I found simple errors like another reviewer all over the place!

I even e-mailed the editors about these errors, and they said they would correct them in the new edition, but it looks like I was wasting my time. They're simply not doing their jobs because I felt like I was reading a pre-proofread book. Horrendous.

It's okay for review if you KNOW these concepts already, but if you are learning some new things, there is no way to tell what is correct and what is not. (If you know everything, play a game with how many mistakes you can find. Have fun.)

Also: I did fine on the test. Over 700, but that is because I like chem a lot and am taking ap chem right now. While this book may have helped a bit, it was excruciating.

Customer Rating: 

THis book really lays out the info in an easily understandable and organized way. It focuses on just the stuff you need to know and doesn't overwhelm you. The practice exams are great and really accurate. I read the book cover to cover like 3 times, did all the practice exams, and got a 780!!

Customer Rating: 

This book is not so much a chemistry review book as a beguiling, deceitful encounter with incompetence. Having read only two-thirds of the so-called review section, I discovered numerous serious errors. Some of these errors include claims that mass is measured in g/mL (p. 45) and that CO2(g) has molecules that are arranged in a regular geometric pattern (p. 57). Additionally, there were misleading statements and diagrams regarding bonds between and within water molecules (p. 85-87), inconsistent values in equations (e.g., p. 108 and 118), and discrepencies between descriptions and diagrams (e.g. p. 124). These more serious errors are in addition to other trivial typos that I discovered. Of course, it is possible that other important errors have escaped my notice, or exist in the chapters that I did not see fit to read. The author and publishing house ought to be ashamed of themselves. Though I was fortunate enough to realize the terrible unsuitability of this rubbish, I tremble for those who were not, and are about to embark on the daunting journey through the SAT II. When one reads this book, one is tempted to convert potential energy into kinetic energy--that is, to throw the book down in disgust.

Customer Rating: 

Like most McGraw test prep books, it is good quality and better than Princeton Review/Kaplan who I swear copy and paste those same "test taking" tricks from one book to another. Once you've read one, it's time to move on. But has anyone noticed that ALL of the other previous reviews are from NEW YORK. Moreover, most of them are only two sentences long, possibly indicating that someone decided to ensure this book had good reviews. If that's the case, that is really horrible because Amazon.com's reviews are generally pretty reliable unless they're reviews on a politically hot and polarized issue. Doing stuff like that is really demeaning to Amazon.com and its patrons.