Master the Catholic High School Entrance Exams 2008 (Master the Catholic High School Entrance Examinations)

This is a fantastic book. I purchased it for one of my students and once I received it, I immediately wished I had purchased one for myself. The book is an invaluable resource for any parent, teacher or student that is preparing for or helping someone prepare for the Catholic High School entrance exams. Even if I weren't teaching Catholic school, I would truly appreciate the book as a resource. The sample tests are great for anyone interested in education.

This book had a fairly good review section for the HSPT, but when you get to the two practice tests, watch out.Your child will be tested on the most ridiculously difficult language problems. The student is supposed to find errors in punctuation, usage and spelling in a number of sentences. The errors are extremely difficult to find, if not impossible. I would dare any college English teacher to take this test and get 90% correct.

One sentence's error was that the word annoy should have been used instead of aggravate. In my thesaurus the first synonym for annoy is aggravate. HELLOOOO! This section has many items just as outrageous. After taking this test, my daughter, who has already taken the SAT in seventh grade and scored 630 on the reading section, felt like a failure. We then bought the Kaplan study guide and did a practice test. The Kaplan is much more in line with what the HSPT should have. Don't waste your money on the Peterson book. The items in other sections often had equally ambiguous answers. Your child's self esteem will suffer with the Peterson book and they will probably become very uptight before the test. The practice tests in this book are very unrealistic and extremely difficult.