2010-04-01 Full of ERRORS and not the most helpful (2 of 5)
After going through the majority of the book, I knew that it was not the best book. There were many errors and misleading information. I bought it because of the good reviews on the Amazon, but I soon realized that many of them were just used to bring up the ratings. I would not recommend this book. If you are actually serious of the SAT chem, do not buy McGraw's book!

2010-01-03 It's a fluff book (1 of 5)
I bought this book solely based on the 11 five-star versus 3 low-star reviews. However, it was misleading. Don't know where those 11 five-star reviews came from. This book is mostly fluff, with very little valuable stuff. Of course, you may buy it--if you target only 500-600. If you want a decent score (>700), I recommend other books, such as Barron, Princeton review, and Kaplan (I bought them from Amazon). In a word, this book is superficial. Don't be fooled by those "good" reviews.

2009-11-26 Easier than the real thing, but provides alot of practice questions (4 of 5)
I bought this book not for the review sections but for the 5 practice tests. I think practice is the most important thing if you want to score well on any exam. I found I scored better on these tests than those in Kaplan's book. I was not surprised when I sat for the real thing and found it harder than this book.

If you don't plan on investing a lot of your time into preparing for SAT Chem, and you're looking for a book that closely models the real thing, get the official Collegeboard instead (although it only has 1 practice test and no review). I did it only once, and because of the mistakes I made, managed not to repeat them when I sat for the real test (and there were quite a few opportunities to repeat them).

However, if, like me, you plan on investing a lot of time into preparing, get this book. The number of tests, despite their low difficulty level, will allow you to practice doing the questions quickly and revise basic concepts.

You should have a reference (maybe a textbook from your course.. or even google) by your side though. It'll greatly help in clarifying important concepts AND providing the information that needs to be memorized. (YES, some of the information needs to be memorized. Meaning, you cannot derive them just from knowing basic concepts)

I got an 800 for the test :)

Hope this helps!

2009-07-22 Use it for the 5 Practice Tests (4 of 5)
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!

2009-01-05 Too many mistakes to take more seriously. (2 of 5)
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.