Have a Shot? Take a Crack!

With the cost of college tuition rising exponentially, securing a full or partial scholarship is desirable. The number of scholarships awarded, as well as the amounts, are small, but the monetary issue aside, a National Merit Scholarship looks great on a college application. Students with a reasonable shot at one might benefit from The Princeton Review's Cracking the PSAT/NMSQT, by Jeff Rubenstein and Adam Robinson. Cracking the PSAT/NMSQT is a kind of precursor to Cracking the SAT, with some notable differences. Students who are not in the running for a National Merit Scholarship should just relax and do their best on the PSAT, but really don't have to study or prepare too much. Cracking plainly states: The PSAT plays no role in college admissions (5)."

Since the PSAT is a much shorter test than the SAT, it naturally follows that Cracking the PSAT/NMSQT is a much shorter book; 386 pages compared to Cracking the SAT's 716. Students should not assume that the PSAT is easier, however, although it lacks the dreaded essay section. Test-takers must contend with two 25-minute Critical Reading sections, two 25-minute Math sections and one 30 minute Writing section (again, sans essay). The authors do a good job of breaking down the PSAT and explaining its various components. They even recommend how to divide review time in their Session-by-Session Study Guide on page 9.

Many of the strategies are identical to those that The Princeton Review prescribes for the longer SAT, which stands to reason. The emphasis on POE (Process of Elimination) makes for sound advice, even though some of the examples in the book are a little simplistic. Trying to maintain a light, reassuring tone, the book introduces readers to Joe Bloggs, the "average" student, and explains how someone who is almost always wrong on the difficult questions can help test-takers. (Joe also appears in Cracking the SAT). But being the quintessential average student, Joe probably wouldn't have a good chance of winning a National Merit Scholarship, would he? But that is beside the point.

The advice concerning Sentence Completions makes sense to an extent: students should come up with their own word for the blank prior to looking at the five answer choices. An example would be:

1. After exercising, Allan was so _____ that he collapsed into bed as soon as he arrived at his apartment.

A student with at least a modicum of intelligence would suggest a word like "tired," and looking at the answer choices

(A) enraged (B) confused (C) belligerent (D) fatigued (E) inebriated

would hopefully choose (D). But during the actual test, students don't have time to play additional guessing games, so this strategy works best during practice drills. The authors' advice for the Critical Reading passages to skim the selections and only read what is needed to find the answers -a strategy echoed in Cracking the SAT, is also of dubious merit. Reading the whole passage, albeit at a fairly quick pace, is better. The breakdown of reading passage questions into Vocabulary in Context, Detail, Infer/Imply/Suggest, Purpose, Tone and Main Idea is rather arbitrary, although it does help clarify concepts. In Cracking the SAT 2011 Edition, the categories are basically the same, except that Infer/Imply/Suggest becomes Suggest/Infer/Imply/Agree and Tone evolves to Tone/Attitude. The Princeton Review periodically changes these reading question categories as it churns out new annual editions, though, so students need not memorize the perennially-changing question types.

The vocabulary in Cracking the PSAT is identical to that of Cracking the SAT, although the preceding few pages in each book are slightly different. The former contains a somewhat superfluous (one of the vocabulary words) pronunciation guide, and divides the words into weekly portions, Week 1through Week 5, to be specific.

The bulk of Part II is dedicated to the Math sections of the PSAT, detailed in chapters 7 through 9 for a total of 87 pages. As in Cracking the SAT, this book dispenses advice about the use of a calculator, which is permitted for both tests. The authors are right in their admonition that a calculator will not help if a student does not understand a particular problem. The three math chapters offer a good sampling of what will actually be on the test, and in addition, the authors preface the drills and sample problems with a review of basic math concepts.

Cracking the PSAT 2011 Edition only contains two practice test, chapters 13 and 14 respectively. There should be a few more pages allotted to the book's 716 pages to allow for at least one more practice test. For students on the threshold of winning a National Merit Scholarship, this book might give them an extra edge. But maybe not.