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the cornerstone to prepping for SAT, with or without a tutor Giving this book five stars is not an indication that I believe it's perfect. Were a student to use it as his sole resource for SAT prep, he would have virtually no have chance of optimizing his potential, attaining the best score he is capable of. The topics covered in the Writing Section review could be much more comprehensive, as could those in the Math Section review. The information on Reading Comprehension review is poor at best, misleading at worst. Nonetheless, I give this book five stars because I consider it essential for students who wish to maximize their scores. No other book can match it in terms of the quality of the questions presented, a fact that's not surprising: the people who write this book also write the real test. They are simply better at writing questions than anyone else, and they possess greater resources with which to do it. At the end of the day, students prepping for the SAT need REAL practice problems. The questions in this book aren't tilted towards one or another test prep company's best techniques; they represent the fullest range of problem types and the most subtle examples of those concepts available anywhere. Moreover, ETS publications always succeed in a way that every other test prep publication fails; namely, the quality of the reading comprehension. Without exception, every other SAT prep book that I have seen comes up incredibly short of the standard set in this book. Often the quality of reading comprehension passages is horrible; inevitably, every other book is nowhere near this one in this respect. The implication of this for students in serious; use the wrong materials and it's almost like you prepared for the wrong test. Expanding on this last point, I must point out the same thing about the other sections. Many test prep books have a bad habit of producing vague or even ambiguous Writing Section questions, while others tend to make the Math sections overly difficult; they do this because math questions are the easiest to write. Preparing for more difficult math may sound like a good approach, but it is not. The trick to the SAT is not the difficulty of the concepts tested, but the difficulty with which those concepts are presented. Preparing for tough math concepts might not prepare you the tricky math questions that the test writers excel at creating. Still, "The Official Guide" is most useful when you have someone who knows what they are talking about showing you why you got questions wrong and then teaching how to get the same types of questions right in the first place. If you can, get some kind of tutor; he'll guide through this book and then, when you run out of problems in this book (if you're serious about preparing, you probably will), he can find you the other materials that come closest to this book in terms of relevance. Ultimately, I highly advise getting help. It will make the time you spend preparing more efficient in terms of what you accomplish and more profitable in terms of your score improvement. On the other hand, should you choose to go it alone, you'll need something more than this book to prepare. My advice, however, is use other books to learn concepts; use "The Official Guide" to assess how well you're doing on them. Ultimately, in teaching my students, 38 of whom have gone on to study at Ivy League universities, with many others getting into the best of the rest, I have always used this material as my main resource for practice and instruction. Before the first new SAT was administered (March 12th, 2005), the previous "Official Guide" was my main resource. I am certain that this guide, as it develops into updated editions, will remain so.