SSAT and ISEE For Dummies

Very easy to read, use and practice. The definitions, the vocabulary, the how-to's make it possible for a middle school student to use this with me in preparation to take the test in the Fall in order to qualify for the private school the students is interested in. I would recommend this to anyone needing to prepare for the middle or upper schools that require this exam.

This is an all-important prep book for taking the SSATs which is requirement for admission into boarding and private schools both in this country and abroad.

I do test prep for a living, and I found these Reading Comprehension exercises so disappointing. I often encountered questions that seemed to have no right answers or multiple right answers. I even found myself selecting the "wrong" answers with some frequency--generally the same "wrong" answer my student had selected! I'm returning the book.

We purchased both this book {SSAT & ISEE for Dummies} and The Princeton Review 2014 Cracking the SSAT & ISEE and used both books to prepare for the ISEE Upper Level test. The Dummies book was significantly better, with more challenging sample test and prep questions as well as detailed answers. The Dummies book was more true to the actual exam.

I found this to be a good resource for practicing for both tests. My students mentioned some of the vocab. was actually on their tests.

The writers of this book did the adult equivalent of copying a Wikipedia article word-for-word, changing a word here and there, and submitting it as their own work. Let me explain. Significant changes were made in the past several years to both the SSAT and the ISEE. Only three SSAT/ISEE prep books on the market have printed new editions that address these changes: this book (SSAT & ISEE for Dummies), the Kaplan book, and the Princeton Review book. This book gets credit for doing by far the best job of replicating the real tests. Here's how the authors did it. Using the official ISEE and SSAT practice material (available to everyone at the ISEE and SSAT websites), the authors copied the math questions word-for-word (not even altering the question order), changed the numbers in each question, and printed it as their own work. Is this the only book currently on the market that accurately replicates the difficulty level of the real ISEE and SSAT? Absolutely. Does it do that by coming up with new and creative math questions that are likely to help prepare you for the math section of ISEE and SSAT? Not at all. As for the bulk of the book (the non-practice test part), it does a good job of providing practice questions of an appropriate difficulty level. Yet, it largely lacks strategies for approaching these questions. Admittedly, this review has focused largely on the math section of the book. This is because math is the area where most students can see significant improvement by preparing for the test. No student can learn thousands of new words or learn to read in just a few months, but any student can greatly improve his/her math skills. If you want an ISEE/SSAT book that has a realistic difficulty level, this is it. If you want an ISEE/SSAT with original practice tests that are not copied directly from publicly available ISEE/SSAT official material, Princeton Review is a better bet.

Very similar content to erb's isee online. Great practice.

All SSAT 2013 text books that I know of, including this one, are out-of-date as some changes were made to the SSAT in 2012. There is now an Elementary (for 3rd and 4th graders), Middle, and Upper Level SSAT. (There used to only be 2 levels: Lower and Upper). These SSAT/ISEE texts cover what is now considered the Middle and Upper Level SSAT (though they call them Lower and Upper). Additionally, their SSAT writing sample questions are out-of-date as the SSAT now uses creative prompts. Check out SSATpracticetest.com for up-to-date, full-length Elementary, Middle, and Upper level practice tests. 8/22/13: I also agree that some of the verbal ISEE content in here is far more challenging than I expect on the real ISEE. Also the UL ISEE essay topic is ACT-like - not a good representation of to expect on the ISEE. I also found a strange repetition of really difficult vocabulary words throughout the UL ISEE Verbal Reasoning section and some glaring errors in the answer key. (I admit I've found glaring errors in our own practice tests but when I have, I've fixed them! :-) ISEEpracticetest.com)