Goodbye, Princeton. I Loved You While It Lasted

by | Sep 10, 2018 | Our Philosophy

I will no longer be recommending Princeton Review’s Math 2 prep books, because their latest edition features a test that is a problem-by-problem parody of an official College Board test.

I don’t have a problem with close copies of official tests — on the contrary, that can be a very sensible strategy for creators of practice materials. However, my methods rely on a rich collection of problems that are different enough from one another that the student can come to generate underlying principles that apply broadly to many different kinds of problems.

Those methods of mine are undermined by problems that closely mimic other problems in the training corpus.

Therefore, I have to reject PR tests, because they follow a strategy that undermines mine.

(Alas, poor Yorick.)

2 Comments

  1. Chris Borland

    Which SAT Math Subject test books *do*you like? I recommend Dr. Chung and Barrons, generally.

    • Wes Carroll

      At present, the official guide and Kaplan only.

      I like the idea of Dr Chung’s book, but for high scorers, I feel like he strays too far out of the bounds of what’s tested, and also gets too far into repetitive exercises for my taste. (Though, to be fair, that’s far better than not enough exercises.)

      Barron’s I’ve been turned off on over the years because of what seems like a pervasive editing problem: they seem to have a much higher mistake rate than the other major players. Have you found them to be reasonably error-free for Math 2, though?

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