Help is available for the new SAT

Help is availablefor the new SAT
By KRISTINE KIERZEK
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Just three little letters, they're guaranteed to strike fear in the hearts of even the top honors students: SAT.
When faced with the SAT, even the best test takers get a few sweaty palms. A new SAT comes out in March. It will include an essay, higher-level math and an extra half- hour of test time.
New books
But help is out there. Taking different approaches, two new books guide students through the test preparation process.
"Test of Time: A NOVEL Approach to the SAT and ACT" is Charles Harrington Elser's unique approach to loading kids up on vocabulary "test words" regularly found on the SAT and ACT. Diligent, industrious, painstaking and sedulous students may make good use of the book's way of setting vocabulary words in boldface within a story, but some may find it distracting. A glossary at the back of the book provides the most help.
Touting itself as "everything you need to ace both the old and new tests," along comes the revised 2005-06 edition of "Up Your Score: The Underground Guide to the SAT."
Conceived by authors who each scored above 1500 on the SAT, the informative guide takes a fun slant on test talk with references to the Evil Testing Serpent (ETS, a k a Educational Testing Service) and Slimy and Atrocious Torture (SAT).