Total Page : 832
Publisher : Barron s Educational Series
Publication Date : 2010 02 01
>> Solid review book but loaded with errors
I really like Barron s review books because their philosophy is that they teach you the subject matter Princeton Review books on the other hand are about cracking the test and does offer good tips but if I were to get one book it d be Barron s because learning the subject is the surest way to getting a good score Having said that the book is LOADED with errors and for that I deduct 1 star anything from just typing the wrong character instead of to wrong answers wrong set ups decimal places in wrong place missing decimal places you get the idea It s as if the whole Chemical Equilibrium chapter was edited by someone who wanted to sabotage the student I am not kidding But the thing is if you reasonably know the concepts you d catch the mistakes because the mistakes are in the examples and not in the concept explanations Don t be scared away because of the typos but just know they are there In the final analysis it is still a valuable book to me and I like it despite its faults
>> Review material decent but with a plethora of errors
While it can be argued that this book does what it is intended to provide a review of chemistry as preparation for the AP it is difficult to justify several glaring issues with it
1 Mistakes in the book For a book coming from a company as well known as Barron s and for a test as widely taken as the AP Chemistry exam one would expect that this book would be well written and carefully checked over for errors Instead nearly every two or three pages there are errors that while not immediately noticeable can cause a good deal of confusion especially when they involve miscalculations in example problems or chapter exercises
2 Example problems Errors in the problems aside one would also expect that for a test that does not allow calculators the example problems in this book would be similar to those on the test that is they would be doable by hand Instead as other reviewers have pointed out the problems expect you to do such calculations as negative logs and exponents without a calculator which is totally unrealistic
3 Over preparation While I heartily agree that it is better to go into a test over prepared rather than under prepared Barron s takes it to an extreme Not only are there equations in the book that will almost certainly not be taught in an AP Chemistry course let alone appear on the AP test the level of detail the book goes into frequently ends up making the information cryptic and difficult to comprehend instead of lucid and clear Indeed the sheer length of the book is comparable to that of an AP Chemistry textbook which makes it less than ideal for simply reviewing material before the exam
Overall this book will prepare you for the AP test However you will in the process be confronted with a tidal wave of typos calculation errors poorly written questions and far more information and detail than is necessary I d expect better from Barron s
>> Disappointing
The review is good but the practice problems are faulty
For example already in Chapter 1 practice problem 8 and 12 have major mistakes In Problem 8 10 14 was written 1014 complicating the problem In Problem 12 the question refers to a concept discussed in chapter 2
I did not read further but if I was able to find 2 faulty problems in such close proximity in chapter 1 then there must be many many more
I would not buy this book I have seriously lost confidence in Barron s
