<p>Reach for all but UC and really bad attitude will show through in interviews and essays. </p>
<p>@TheAtlantic Thanks 
I made this thread to compare my results with my friend. And I repeatedly said I know that the Ivy’s are reaches for me. And I’m not trying to be cocky. I know there are tons of people a LOT more qualified than me, and a lot more intelligent than me.</p>
<p>@TigerCC2014 I don’t have a bad attitude? I wouldn’t have gotten into Tyson’s program if I did (Required interview and essay). I do charity work, volunteering, tutoring. I just get defensive at times? Everyone has faults.</p>
<p>@ckoepp127, no, I am not being obtuse. There is a significant correlation between SAT scores and family income. The college board releases this info and I’ve looked at it. What I dispute is the common misconception that this correlation is caused by high income families spending a lot of money on test prep classes and tutors. The SAT is measuring disparities in quality of education that began almost at birth. Poor kids are less likely to hear grammatically correct English spoken in the home, less likely to attend quality schools, probably less likely to be read to as kids, less likely to be raised in an environment where education is valued, less likely to even prepare at all for the SAT, less likely even to take the SAT, less likely to have any plan or ambition to attend college, less likely to have college-educated parents. I could go on and on. It’s just ridiculous to ignore the huge educational differences and say it’s the tutors. FYI, my daughter didn’t have a tutor, she had a $15 test prep book and she outscored the OP and evidently everyone else in the 4 high schools in his wealthy school system who all have even more tutoring than the OP who, poor kid, only had one summer of tutoring.</p>
<p>And if you look at other tests, tests which are not high-stakes and for which no one is going to bother doing intensive test-prep, wealthy kids are not getting special tutoring, you find the same correlations of test scores with wealth. It’s not the tutoring, it’s the education.</p>
<p>@mathyone You should feel extremely proud of your daughter. She achieved something that is EXTREMELY difficult without prep.</p>
<p>I grew up in a household speaking exclusively Gujurati. I didn’t learn English until I was 6. My starting SAT score was 1820 (480 on writing, 550 on CR, and 790 on Math), so I agree with you on part of your statement, however it was my classes that seriously upped my score. The prep center at which I’d gone to raised on average, people from 1500 up to 2200 in 1 summer, so I have to go with the correlation that prep does lead to high scores.</p>
<p>She did prep. She studied from a book. A few times, I answered some questions for her when she didn’t understand something in the book, and if I didn’t know, I told her to ask a teacher at school. Certainly prep raises scores. But I see so many people whining that they cannot afford a private tutor or a class and therefore they cannot do well. That is simply not true. </p>
<p>However, she had the advantage over you of being a native English speaker, and having parents who are as well. I don’t know what her starting scores were but I know the verbal scores were way higher than that, so her task was not as difficult.</p>
<p>@mathyone Do you have actual proof that expensive tutoring isn’t a factor in producing higher scores besides those two anecdotal examples (one of which comes off as thinly-veiled bragging)? I could just as easily shoot back that every single NMSF from my school this year took a prep class immediately prior to taking the class, though that would be just as invalid an argument as the anecdotal ones you have. Look, it’s obviously true that kids without tutoring <em>have</em> scored higher than those with tutoring, but we should be careful not to conflate this with proof that tutoring, especially expensive tutoring, doesn’t provide another significant advantage to wealther kids.
Read page 12 of this study: <a href=“http://www.nacacnet.org/research/publicationsresources/marketplace/documents/testprepdiscussionpaper.pdf”>http://www.nacacnet.org/research/publicationsresources/marketplace/documents/testprepdiscussionpaper.pdf</a>
To anticipate a possible counterargument you may have after reading this (namely, that the study calls the score boost “small”), I’d point out that the study also recognizes that about a third of all colleges consider a score boost of 10-20 points enough to distinguish a more qualified applicant from a lesser qualified one. Ergo, tutoring, which often costs hundreds to thousands of dollars, provides benefits that allow one applicant to be distinguished as “superior” to another. This is indeed a significant benefit to the wealthier. Also, you cite one potential source of score disparity as being “less likely to prepare at all for the SAT.” Are you aware that tutoring is pretty much the essence of SAT test preparation? Never did I ignore the educational differences or any other potential differences you refer to. From the beginning, I have merely been positing that tutoring heavily influences scores as well. Finally, I don’t want to presume too much, but your post above comes of a little blame-the-victim-y. I think we should be careful not to attribute real socioeconomic disadvantage to simply “not valuing education.”</p>
<p>Regardless, I believe the discussion is moot, as I think your original comment was something along the lines of bluberaptor’s score dispelling the myth of wealthier students simply paying for expensive tutors in order to get higher scores. Whether or not it’s due to tutors or education, the wealthy still have a considerable and unfair advantage and I don’t think you should be satisfied even if bluberaptor had “dispelled the myth,” and tutoring really didn’t matter. Don’t feel good about him potentially dispelling that myth, feel bad that there regardless remains a tremendous wealth gap and that the reality, as you yourself have acknowledged, is that money often leads to better test scores.</p>
<p>@bluberaptor Well, that explains it. Lol.</p>
<p>@ckoepp127, I’ve read that test prep classes typically provide a boost of 30 points. To quote “Hanna”. a professional test prep tutor on this site from a recent post:</p>
<p>"“Secondly, the overwhelming majority of SAT scores over 2200 are achieved with the aid of intensive prep.”</p>
<p>I sell intensive prep, and I don’t see any evidence for this statement. Or do you consider taking a course to be “intensive”? (I used to teach the courses at a big national company, and I don’t consider them intensive.) Most high scorers do some prep, but a lot of it is self-study. If you start out at 2100, you likely have the academic skills to teach yourself; the hard part is the discipline.</p>
<p>In my experience as a teacher, it is quite rare for students to reach the 2200+ range unless they start out within 100 points or so of that range. Bringing a score up by one standard deviation (100 points) in a single section is considered a superb result in the test prep community. There just isn’t any product offered on a mass scale that brings middling scores into the elite range. Truly intensive prep – one-on-one work with a real expert, multiple hours per week for months – has better odds, but improving by a standard deviation on each section is still a really good outcome."</p>
<p>So, by Hanna’s estimation, (and mine too) the OP made remarkable gains. Though for non-native speakers, practice may yield more benefits.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s absolutely true the wealthy have an advantage on these tests, but as I said, I think for the most part it’s due to their advantages in just about every aspect of life, not specifically to tutoring. There are plenty of wealthy kids getting tutoring and not achieving what the OP did. If all it took to get scores like that is to be a wealthy kid getting tutoring, we’d see more than a few thousand each year with those scores. You can control for the effect of tutoring by looking at tests which people don’t get tutoring to prep for, and if you do that, you still see a correlation of scores with income. That’s certainly true for the standardized tests given in our state.</p>
<p>@mathyone a 30 point increase is well above the point at which colleges distinguish between students and is therefore incredibly significant, regardless of whether or not it reaches that prized 100 point difference that the test prep community hopes for. Once again, you have provided anecdotal evidence. I could name at least 10 kids from my class whose scores went up at least 100 points after taking a test prep class, but that wouldn’t prove anything. Anecdotes and points that begin with “in my experience” are no substitute for actual studies.</p>
<p>@mathyone I don’t believe Hanna’s statement. Almost every single prep place in my city boasts AVERAGE score improvements of 462+ points with the mean score of the students ending the prep at 2141. That test isn’t a matter of learning material. Most of the material is already taught through the public schooling experience. Tutoring helps define nuances that can be easily spotted to artificially boost a score. And I concur with @ckoepp127 's statement. All, but one, of the students at my school who have scored 2200+ (There are 36 that I know), have all received intense prep from brand names such as Kaplan, C2, American Cambridge Institution, etc. Furthermore, more than half of the people getting those scores started out with mediocre scores such as 1500-1700. There’s even a girl at my school who started at 1380 (Rich, native English speaker) who ended with a 2170.</p>
<p>I didn’t have time to more than glance at the study linked by @ckoepp127, but I think the gains cited in that study were far lower than the numbers you are citing, more like the 30 points I recall having seen mentioned before. So, either test prep has gotten 10-fold more effective since that study was done or else something else is wrong here.</p>
<p>What? Nothing need be wrong. Surely you understand that just because the study gives an average score increase doesn’t mean that every student to ever take the SAT has to increase by exactly that much after receiving tutoring. As with anything, your mileage may vary. Some may increase scores by 10-20 points, and some by 100-200. The <em>average</em> is a 10-20 boost, but that doesn’t mean it’s inconceivable that tutoring could boost scores by more than that.</p>
<p>“Almost every single prep place in my city boasts AVERAGE score improvements of 462+ points” seems inconsistent with the 10-20 boost reported in that study. That’s what I meant by “wrong”. Perhaps the claims are accurate. Or perhaps they are somehow inflated. I am also a bit puzzled by the low initial scores reported by the OP, both for himself and others. </p>
<p>Yes, I understand averages, but if all the test centers in the OP’s area are posting such huge gains, somewhere there must be another city where kids attending test prep are rewarded for their efforts by huge losses or no improvement whatsoever. Or else the average gains would not be so close to 0.</p>
<p>@mathyone Not even a population as large as a city need abide by a national average, so it’s completely possible that a city have average increases of that much.</p>
<p>You are incorrect in stating that there must be a city where everyone’s scores decrease after taking a tutoring class. First of all, who said that test prep is only observable in large lump sums such as cities? The OP may be referring to his own city when referencing the efficacy of tutoring, but that doesn’t mean there <em>has</em> to a concentrated population, such as a city, that counteracts these effects. It’s far more likely that the average is reached by comparing students interspersed across the nation, not by comparing cities, which would not work as scores often (not always, depending on the size of the city) have great variance even in cities alone. Secondly, rethink your understanding of averages. Students wouldn’t have to have <em>decreasing</em> scores to bring down the national average. Rather, there has to be enough students that scored lower than the gains stated by the OP but still scored at least 10-20 points higher, which, as I believe we have both agreed upon, is considered significant by a third of all colleges, and is therefore significant. For example, consider 100 kids who see boosts of 10 points, and 10 kids who see boosts of 100 points. Computing the average, we get an average boost of 18 points. No one needed score negative or even break even for this to happen. No matter how technical you want to get, if you can admit that the average increase is 10-20 points, than you’re admitting that tutoring is significant–a third of the colleges in the country recognize that difference, separating one applicant from the other.</p>
<p>@ckoepp127
That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Do you think the SAT was created with the anticipation that no one will be able to get a high score without test-preparation? </p>
<p>@bluberaptor
My family usually speaks in Gujurati as well. I received a 750 on the writing portions of the SAT. </p>
<p>@wannabefeynman No, and I haven’t been saying that from the beginning. Stop attacking the straw man. </p>
<p>Also, really? The research-validated suggestion that tutoring can be significant in separating groups of scorers is the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard? Why do you speak with such conviction? Did I touch a nerve? Do you have a personal stake in the matter?</p>
<p>@ckoepp127
I never said that you are stupid, just what you said. It has been validated that only rarely does a female take classes such as Math 55 at Harvard. Does that mean females are weaker in mathematics then men? I do not think so. There are different factors which cause the correlation such as anyone who takes a test-preparation course is obviously determined. </p>
<p>@wannabefeynman I understand that you’re not calling me stupid. That wasn’t what was fallacious about your statement above. The stupidest thing you’ve heard is that “the SAT was created with the anticipation that no one will be able to get a high score without test-preparation.” The problem is, I never said that or even implied that. So what about my argument is stupid? If you still don’t understand, here: <a href=“Straw man - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man</a></p>
<p>The rest of your post is similarly fallacious, this time via a faulty analogy. The difference between this study and the one conducted about math at Harvard is immense. For one thing, the conclusion drawn from the Harvard study is not founded. There are, as you recognize, numerous explanations for the lack of girls in math classes: gender inequality, cultural norms, and stereotype threat, among other things. This study, which can be found a page or two back, draws no such conclusions. It simply reflects that those who take tutoring classes end up with scores that can be signficantly higher. Also, other factors, such as a test-taker being “determined,” were very obviously controlled for. This was a professionally conducted study that eliminated confounding variables.</p>
<p>Arguing with people who are logically illiterate…</p>
<p>A difference of 10-20 points is within the SD of those tests. Depending what day you took the exam, you could miss the exact same number of questions yet get a score that differs by 10 or 20. It’s just not meaningful and top colleges do recognize that. I think they know what SD is. Over a large sample size, that difference between two groups is probably significant, but it’s still not that far away from 0. </p>
<p>My point is that the claims made by the test prep centers and the anecdotes told by the OP seem very different from the reports coming in from elsewhere. Suppose just 100 students in the OP’s school gain the claimed average increase of 462 points. And I’ll use the 30 point typical gain I’ve heard before. It would take over 40,000 kids in another city scoring just under the average increase (29) to balance out just the claimed results for 100 students from the OP’s one school. That’s like the entire high school college-bound class in a smaller state. No matter how you look at it, something seems a bit wrong to me. Have I made a mistake? I checked because it seems so far off, but that is what I get. (You didn’t like 0 or negative gains, so I used one point under the average, hope that is satisfactory).</p>
<p>@ckoepp127<br>
That’s quite a claim. Do you have evidence to support that I am “logically illiterate?” </p>
<p>@wannabefeynman Empirically speaking? No, of course not. I’ve never even met you. But it’s certainly the impression I get after reading some of your replies.</p>
<p>Also, do you have anything to say to the bulk of my reply, or just the last sentence?</p>
<p>@mathyone Yep, at top schools the significance is going to be much less pronounced simply because top schools differentiate less between schools as a whole. After all, who’s to say who the better student is between one who scores a 2360 and a 2350? It’s the vast majority of other schools where it becomes a problem. At these schools, where test scores are a lot more significant, scores are more spread out (that is, it’s not like at ivy league schools or the like where everyone scores 2200+), and there is less practice of holistic admission, tutoring can provide definite benefits, enough to lift one student above another.</p>
<p>Regarding your point about SD, I think the idea is that if one <em>individual</em> scores 10 points higher on a certain test, it’s certainly not significant. However, we’re dealing with the averages of a much larger sample size. When <em>thousands</em> of tutored kids are consistently scoring higher than those who don’t get tutored by 10-20 points, I think there is significance in that.</p>
<p>Finally, I don’t think it’s that far-fetched for bluberaptor to be telling the truth. When you consider that we’re dealing with millions of students when we talk about who takes the SAT every year, 100 or even 1000 kids getting boosts of 100-200 points after tutoring classes isn’t that much of a statistical anomaly. When you keep in mind that those other 40,000 kids don’t all come from the same city and are in fact spread across the US, it’s a little more believable. These numbers don’t even put a dent into the total SAT-taking population per year.</p>