ACCUPLACER®: Bob Miller's Math Prep (College Placement Test Preparation)

I love this book. I was quite good at math in high school, but that was about nine years ago. I had forgotten even very basic things, and I knew that I needed to start at the bottom and work my way up, but I also didn't want to purchase a book for every math subject from middle school through high school. I didn't want the spend the time or money going through that many books, and I felt that, since I already had mastered the concepts in the past, I really just needed a condensed lesson in each topic. Fortunately, this book was recommended to me, and it's exactly what I needed.I took my Accuplacer before I read the book, to try to get a handle on where I stood, and I scored a 57 on the college level math (surprisingly, the exam proctor said that that was higher than average). Unfortunately, a 57 wouldn't even get me into College Algebra; I would have had to take some type of Intermediate Algebra course, College Algebra, and then Pre-Calculus before I could even get into Calculus. Since I need three semesters of Calculus for my degree, and two semesters of physics that have Calculus as a pre-requisite, that wasn't going to work. So, using this book, I crammed like a mad-man for about 3 and a half days and then went to re-take the test. This time, I scored a 106 on the college level math, which got me into Calculus.Because this book empowered me to skip three semesters of math, I gave it five stars. It's a tremendous value. Ten bucks and I was able to save lots of money, and a year and a half of my life. The book starts off incredibly basic and ends just before Calculus level math. Most of the information is very easy to understand.I do, however, have to admit that the book is not perfect. There are a few instances throughout the book when the author makes a typo on his example problems. Sometimes it was very obviously a typo, and not an issue, but there were a few occasions where it left me scratching my head and trying to figure out what was going on with the math. Also, some of the higher level stuff is not covered in much detail. I didn't walk away from the book feeling like a had a particularly firm grasp on Trig or Conic Sections. Also, on the Accuplacer, there were a couple of questions relating to graphing that weren't really covered by the book, and I would have liked for the book to have contained a "quick reference" type of section that had all of the formulas and such on one or two pages for me to quickly study without having to flick through the whole book in such of formulas.Despite these few shortcomings, things still worked out just fine, so I feel that the book deserves five stars. It would be silly to expect one ten dollar book to be able to completely replace like five high school textbooks, so it would be silly to expect the book to contain in-depth coverage of every possible math concept. And, while the typos were annoying, I still would have to stress the value of the book. Ten bucks for a book with so much knowledge crammed into is amazing, even with typos. I just spent $200 on a calculus book, so it's difficult to feel otherwise.

Likek many of these reviews I am returning to school after a 20+ year absence. I have never been done particularly will in math, I believe partially because I really didn't have good teacher since I was in the 7th grade. The last math class I took in college was a disaster but now with the internet there are SO many more resources than there was then. I studied this book for a few months looking up things on Kahn Academy and various college websites when I couldn't understand things. I most certainly learned a lot but after chapter 9 it just started falling apart for me. This book does seem to move very quickly and many of the topics went much further than it seemed needed for the Accuplacer.I would HIGHLY recommend using this in conjunction with the College Board Accuplacer Web-Based Study App that is available for $3. When I took the test today it seemed like several of the questions were almost taken directly off the app.I took the test today and got a 120 in arithmetic, 117 in elementary algebra and a 43 in College math. I'm happy with those and definitely saved a lot of time and money skipping unnecessary classes.

I have been a registered nurse for the past 9 years and need to take statistics to complete my RN to BSN program. I ended up having to take the Accuplacer for placement into statistics and since I haven't taken an algebra class for the past 13 years I scored quite poorly on my first attempt at the test and didn't test into my statistics class even after online studying and practice tests. Luckily, my college allows you to retest once so I ordered this book and it was awesome. It literally starts at the very beginning of simple arithmetic and explains all the different math aspects through college math. I retook the exam after only 2 weeks of studying from this book and not only achieved twice my original score, but even tested out of the course that I needed. I loved the break down and teaching method used in this book and highly recommend it for that much needed refresher on your math skills.

Explanations on how to attack the problems and what the answers should be and why are generally missing or inadequate. For my way of thinking and understanding, this book is significantly inferior to the Princeton Review books. But it is the only one I could find for the Accuplacer test.Princeton Review, are you listening? You need to make an Accuplacer book!I know that people's learning and understanding styles vary, so I would advise trying all the major tutoring books (Princeton Review, Barrons, Bob Miller, etc.) The huge amount that can be gained (tens of thousands of dollars worth of scholarships or avoided classes) by doing well on these standardized tests make it greatly worth your while to spend $50 or so to get all the books you can to help you with these crucial standardized tests. Thanks to this strategy, all 4 of my 4 kids got huge scholarships saving our family hundreds of thousands of dollars in university costs. Start working on this stuff at least in 7th or 8th grade.

The book definitely gives you a lot of problems to practice and a lot of tests to help you get better at math. The only problem I saw was that while it explains concepts somewhat, it also assumes that you remember details that really connect the steps you need to take to solve a problem. The book lacks those certain details and the extra explanations you might need for things you've just completely forgotten to do. All in all, it's a good book to help you practice for the test, but you do need a secondary book to help you with more detailed explanations.