1600.io SAT Math Orange Book Volume I: Every Topic, Patiently Explained

My daughter received 800 in Math after this book! Excellent tool.

First time seeing a math book written by someone who actually really do want you to succeed and tries everything to make it easy for you. Appreciated.

I'm a Harvard graduate, SAT perfect scorer, and professional SAT private tutor since 2002. "1600.io SAT Math, Volume I," aka the orange book, by Gotta, Kirchheimer and Rimakis, is a solidly organized, well-presented set of imitation SAT math practice questions, chapter lessons, strategy tips, and detailed question explanations that are meant to help students truly learn, instead of just "hacking" the test—certainly a worthy goal, but one to which the authors cling with excessive gusto and pretension, to the reader's detriment.  The fact is, sometimes alternative, "backdoor" methods and hacks such as plugging in, using one's graphing calculator, or even mental math / estimation are exactly what's needed to solve an SAT math question quickly and easily.While the roughly 450 non-official SAT math practice questions in this guide are mostly excellent, thorough, and wide-ranging, and the organization of the orange book into discrete chapters is top-notch, the 3 authors unfortunately take the opportunity to dispense some highly suspect math strategy advice along the way ("Plugging in Is Surrender" / "Calculators: Tools of the Devil" / "Mental Math is Dumb"). Meanwhile, they stubbornly stick to an algebra-heavy approach that both takes up too much space visually in the book, and can require an excessive amount of time for students to solve.  As a result, the provided explanation is not always ideal.  Thus, I would recommend this book more strongly as a set of practice questions organized by topic than as a reliable, standalone SAT math strategy guide. Like the College Board's written explanations to SAT exams 1-10, the 1600.io explanations will often leave you wanting more, so keep trying each question yourself until it makes sense.As with any 423-page math book, I expect there to be the occasional error.  Don't believe the reviewers who give this book 1 or 2 stars just because of a few typos: nearly all test-prep guides have mistakes in the first few editions, and the authors have promised to maintain an errata page on the book's website.  Volume I contains the following chapters: Preface, Acknowledgements, Introductions, 0) Foundations, 1) Linear Relationships, 2) Slope-Intercept Form, 3) Standard Form / Parallel and Perpendicular Lines, 4) Systems of Linear Equations, 5) Linear Inequalities and Absolute Value, 6) Exponents and Radicals / Roots, 7) Introduction to Polynomials, 8) Solving Quadratic Equations, 9) Extraneous Solutions and Dividing Polynomials, 10) The Graphs of Quadratic Equations and Polynomials, 11) Number of Zeroes / Imaginary and Complex Numbers.There's also a nice feature at the end of each chapter, where the authors recommend similar questions from the 22 official, released SAT QAS exams.  There are about 20 other official SAT and PSAT exams floating around as well, however, so it would have been nice for the authors to have provided recommendations from those tests, too.One slightly annoying feature: the authors frequently toss around the trademarked term "SkillDrill," as if they had invented the concept of drilling basic math skills before moving on to harder questions. Spoiler alert: this concept (and term) has already been widely used for decades.In addition, the adult authors' repeated insistence that "there are no very hard problems on the SAT" is ableist and unproductive, not to mention highly insulting to high schoolers struggling to master SAT math: ironically, the authors' exact target audience.Overall, however, this math guide is a solid addition to the SAT prep pantheon. Is it the "best SAT math book ever written," as the authors boast in the book's preface? I would give that a firm "no" (College Panda still wins that honor for me), but I'm sure others will disagree.Best of luck on your SAT and beyond. For more information, and my full list of SAT prep recommendations, google "SAT Action Plan - McElroy Tutoring."

Tutor approved 👌

If you’re looking for a way to increase your score, then you should no doubt check out these 2 books. Not only do they cover every math topic on the SAT, but they also teach you quicker ways to maneuver through the Math section. These books along with the online explanations that go with them on the 1600.io website are a sure fire way to dominate the SAT math section. :)