Kaplan Catholic High School Entrance Exams, 2009 Edition

I would not recommend this book. I found lots of errors. This is very frustrating. It has lots of tests but its not worth the money based on the poor quality control in editing and proofing the book.

We bought this book after buying Barron's How to Prepare for the Coop/HSPT/TACHS to get a few more practice exams for my son, who just took the HSPT this past weekend. Though we preferred Barron's review sections, it was helpful to re-enforce the concepts with the Kaplan chapters.

What was most frustrating about the Kaplan book was that there simply were too many mistakes in the sample test answers. We took a final sample practice a couple of days before the HSPT. Because we had used up all the sample HSPT exams, we used portions of a sample TACHS exam instead. For the Language Arts section, the answers led us to believe that my son missed 8 out of 40 questions. When we reviewed the answers, it became apparent that only 3 questions were actually wrong. This caused much unnecessary stress.

According to my son, the actual test had much harder verbal skills questions and easier language arts questions. Of course, we do not know how well he did yet, so this information may not be reliable.

This book had a number of practice exams along with tips on how to have success on the test. My son used it for the HSPT. I do believe there were some errors on answers but have not had time to confirm them. All in all, I thought it was good prep and good value.