With most of the high school students I know wrapped up in beginning their classes, I was unable to borrow any to help me review this course. Instead, I spent several hours viewing these DVDs and reading through the texts to get a feel for these materials.
According to the website, the 4 DVDs supposedly cover the same material that is covered in Mrs. Burk’s 10 hour class. Because the viewing times add up to less than 5 hours, she must be including time to work through the problems without the DVD running.
I expected to see Mrs. Burk when I inserted the DVD into my laptop. Instead, a Power Point slide presentation began, with her softly accented voice narrating the slides. For many of the slides, she was simply reading what was on the slides. Her voice is soft and easy to listen to, although also easy to fall asleep to. She varies the appearance of the slides in each DVD and section, so you do have variety. This is not something to sit and watch all at once however—you will fall asleep.The running times are as follows: Intro-35 minutes; Critical Reading-1:33; Math-2:15; Writing-1:15.
The workbook accompanies the DVD, containing practice problems for each section. The textbook contains the details for evaluating and analyzing the test overall and the sections individually. To get the most out of the class, the student should watch the DVD after reading the textbook.
This course focuses not on learning the content of the test, but on analyzing the patterns and questions, and answering them based on strategies she gives. She relies heavily on acronyms, with some sections having multiple acronyms. These acronyms are not intuitive or obvious. You must read through the text and watch the DVDs multiple times to understand them.
Many test prep courses cost into the hundreds and more. This is a reasonably priced alternative. Persuasively, she explains how spending 150 hours on SAT test prep will net you $500/hour for college should you earn a $75000 scholarship. While many high school students in traditional schools may have access to materials such as these through courses offered at their schools, this course would be extremely helpful to home school students who desire a college degree without the heavy debt that come with most diplomas. The cost is $79 for the workbook, textbook, and DVD set. You can order it from the store at College Prep Genius.
In my earlier review, I mentioned that the materials don’t contain any kind of getting started guide or time breakdown for the DVDs. This would be helpful, for both the parent and the student. It would make this much more user-friendly. However, this is still a helpful product, and I learned much that I will pass on to students and parents who ask me about SAT prep. Click on the image below to see what my crewmates think of this product.
