Product Description

In March 2005, the College Board will begin to administer a new SAT®. To help prepare all students for the new SAT and college success(tm), the College Board introduces:

The Official SAT Study Guide: For the New SAT(tm)

Here's the successor to the College Board's #1 best seller 10 Real SAT®s. This new book is the only one with practice tests created by the test maker according to proprietary new SAT specifications. With the book's 700+ pages and 21 chapters, students:

• Gain experience by taking 8 practice tests and receiving estimated scores.
• Raise confidence by reviewing concepts, test-taking approaches, and practice questions.
• Increase understanding of the new PSAT/NMSQT® and the new SAT. Plus, book buyers receive free online score reports and a discount on The Official SAT Online Course(tm) with auto essay scoring.

Changes to the new SAT include:

The name of the current SAT verbal section will be changed to critical reading, analogies will be eliminated and short reading passages will be added to existing long reading passages.

A new section called the SAT writing section will be added, which will contain multiple-choice grammar and usage questions and a student- written essay.

The SAT math section will be expanded to include topics from third-year college- preparatory math (also known as Algebra II); in addition, quantitative comparisons will be eliminated from this section. The Official SAT Study Guide: For the New SAT is part of the College Board's new SAT Readiness Program(tm) of print, online, and professional development resources.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-07
• Released on: 2004-10-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 889 pages

About the Author
The College Board is a national nonprofit membership association whose mission is to prepare, inspire, and connect students to college success and opportunity. Founded in 1900, the association is composed of more than 4,300 schools, colleges, universities, and other educational organizations. Each year, the College Board serves over three million students and their parents, 23,000 high schools, and 3,500 colleges through major programs and services in college admissions, guidance, assessment, financial aid, enrollment, and teaching and learning.

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Customer Reviews

Pair This Book With Barron's!!
I am a verbal SAT tutor for the past 26 years. Here is my formula for success, and it is the reason that people pay me an insane amount of money to work with their kids. Step #1 -- Get the Barron's SAT book first. Do every test. Read the answer explanations carefully. Step #2 -- Get this book. Take the 8 practice tests, sitting straight through for each exam, 4 hours with the break. This book is easier than Barrons, so you should feel an improvement when you take these real tests. Get the book HOT WORDS FOR THE SAT by Linda Carnevale, and learn a few chapters each week. Good luck on the exam!!

Both an upgrade and a downgrade in this new revision
"The Official SAT Study Guide" is "10 Real SATs" in all but name. Created and published by the College Board--the creators and administrators of the actual SAT--this series has for years been the single most valuable resource for SAT preparation. The value does not necessarily derive from the instructional material that makes up the first portion of the book (which is instructive and adequate, but nothing spectacular), but from the actual SAT tests from which the series used to get its name. While the multipound test-prep tomes from Kaplan, Princeton Review, and others all have their strong points, nothing beats having *actual SAT questions and tests* at your disposal; yes, there is a distinct difference between questions actually vetted by ETS and those created by third-party companies. Simply put, 10 Real SATs was *the* tool for preparing for the most overemphasized-yet-necessary test on the block.

The recent advent of the "New" SAT (which, for the record, removes Quantitative Comparisons and analogies, adds some higher math content, introduces "short" reading comprehension passages, and features a watered-down version of the old SAT II writing with an additional 25 minute, blink-and-you'll-miss-it essay section that receives far too much press) meant that the Real SAT product line was due for an upgrade. As prior "new editions" of 10 Real SATs rarely featured changes that weren't of a we-swapped-out-two-tests-and-added-in-two-new-tests character, I was curious to see how the College Board would revamp its flagship line. Unfortunately, it's a mixed effort.

For starters, we now have *8* full-length tests. Granted, each test is a decent bit longer--the new SAT is an absolute marathon--but the net effect is still a bit detrimental; needless to say, it's unsurprising that the College Board elected to avoid calling this book "8 Real SATs!" (These also aren't "real" SATs, a problem I'll get to momentarily)

The writing section is generally well introduced in the instructional material. As mentioned before, the "new" writing section is in reality a watered-down version of the old SAT II writing, but it's presented well. My big criticism here involves the book's treatment of the essay. It presents "samples" of good essays, bad essays, and essays in between. Page 123 presents an essay that supposedly received a score of "6" (the highest score available), and I'm halfway convinced that this example of SAT perfection is the cause of at least some of the overemphasis of the essay by panicked parents; pedantic, long-winded, and full of jargon, it sounds decidedly unlike something a normal high-school Junior would create in 25 minutes. There's another example of an essay that received the top score on the preceding two pages, and it is MUCH more palatable, but it is written in handwriting (as opposed to "handwriting font") and is thus frequently ignored...which is quite unfortunate.

The real problem with this book, though, is that those celebrated "real" SATs...well, aren't anymore. Oh, to be sure, these are still real College Board questions, and the book is still valuable for that alone. But these SATs were *never given*, and as such the scoring data--a valuable part of prior editions--is next to useless.

For example, instead of the one-through-five difficulty scale, we get a three-stage "easy, medium, hard" scale for ranking questions, which is far less useful than the ranked-by-reaction scores in the old book. Worse, the difficulty rankings seem to have no real basis in reality, especially in the new Writing section; whole sections that all receive an "easy" ranking will demonstrate distinct fluctuations in difficulty.

It's the scoring information, though, that is really the book's biggest flaw. With older editions, after struggling through a timed practice test, you received the satisfaction of getting a distinct score; those "Real SATs" were actually given, and thus raw scores were accurately weighted to a corresponding score on the infamous out-of-1600 scale. For the new SAT, this immediately becomes somewhat problematic, as the inclusion of the essay makes scoring of the writing section difficult. But as these SATs were never given, there isn't a real scale for the conversion of raw scores to weighted scores. Instead, the CB presents a *range* of possible scores; unfortunately, these ranges are often frustratingly broad and vague ("610-690" is a huge range to contemplate).

I suppose the above criticism is somewhat unfair, as the College Board was confronted with an unwinnable dilemma. On one hand, it could delay the revision of its flagship title until enough SATs had been administered to generate a "real SAT" book; on the other, doing so would result in the odd situation of the College Board not releasing an official guide to its own creation! This dilemma, however, does not excuse the College Board from creating a new edition that is decidedly less useful than preceding editions.

Verdict: Yes, "The Official SAT Study Guide" is still the best thing out there, as its ability to use actual SAT questions makes it an invaluable study tool. Be aware, though, that accurate scoring is almost impossible with the new edition.

New SAT, But Not All New Questions
To save yourself some money, don't rush into buying this book. You may not need it. The College Board provides a copy of a complete New SAT test on its web site, which you can download for FREE. This book provides 8 additional tests. However, a fair number of questions are recycled from the guide to the "old" SAT, called 10 Real SATs, which you or an older sibling may already own. Also, this book provides only an answer key for each test, not the explanations. This somewhat limits its usefulness.