Review: One of the great benefits of this and other Barron's books is the help they provide in sorting out good advice from bad. Here are three examples of bad advice you may get related to preparing for the math SAT II Math Level IC test. 1. Are you better off using your textbooks for test prep rather than a test-prep review book? Try this experiment. Go get your arithmetic, algebra one, geometry, algebra two and trigonometry books (if you can find them) and put them in a stack in front of you. (Don't get your precalulus text. Precalculus is tested on Level IIC not Level IC). Now put this Barron's guide next to the stack. See? Even if you had time to review all five books, again, they do not contain sample Level IC tests for practice and they offer no advice on handling multiple-choice questions. But they do contain lots of things not tested. Classroom texts are unbeatable for presenting information during classroom study as you are learning a course. They are neither as effective or as efficient as this carefully designed review guide for test preparation. 2. Should you prepare by reviewing how to derive formulas and prove theorems? It is great to understand the foundations of math principles and how formulas are derived, but only the applications of the formulas, properties and procedures are tested. Even if you know how to prove, say, that the slopes of perpendicular lines are negative reciprocals, it is the fact, itself, and its
application that are tested. Good review guides like this one help you to focus on what is tested so you don't eat up valuable time reviewing things not tested. 3. Do you need to master one specific form of mathematical notation? Notation varies from teacher to teacher, textbook to textbook and country to country. Each mathematician seems to develop his or her own favorite style and can get downright snooty about someone else's presentation. As this book notes, ETS avoids the
notation controversy by keeping the notation as simple as possible, even avoiding mathematical notation as much as possible. That means you don't have to master the same notation as your teacher and your textbook (even in the unlikely event the two agree all the time) to do well on the test. This book takes you carefully through presentations while avoiding all but the most basic and easily understood notation, just like the questions and answers you'll find on the Level IC test. I
highly recommend this book for its great advice and easy to read presentations.
