<p>
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It is no different than taking acting lessons, private music instruction, or using a training coach for a sport.
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no, it is not quite. a private music instructor teaches you how to play the instrument, not to win awards or pass a test. she sure doesn't teach you how to ace a single type of competition. but sure, it can do both--and in this case, High School is the instructor, which helps you learn first and foremost, and then things like SATs are supposed to be less important than what you've actually learned</p>
<p>if you've got the brains for it and know you're CAPABLE of the score you want, all you have to do is have the discipline to achieve it.</p>
<p>i paid: $160 for a whole lotta test prep books including sat and sat ii (i won't lie, i studied for my scores, and i got them); i earned a 2380</p>
<p>i paid: $8 in overdue fees and $20 on an ap psychology book that i couldnt get from the library (i checked out the other 5 from the library); i earned 5 5's and a 4 on chemistry</p>
<p>$200 is still a lot to some people, but every single one of these books i could have checked out from the library and paid nominal late fees if that to study with.</p>
<p>It was between my kid and her friend, and the friend's mom had taught her Latin roots. all the other kids had been eliminated from the Reader's Digest word power competition, which my kid had represented the school at the previous year.
Well, my kid flubbed a word that the other kid got right due to knowing Latin roots. So the other girl went on to represent the school that year.
My kid said she knew all the other words coming up after that word that she faltered on (I guess so, she has read constantly since first grade and got an 800 on critical reading on SAT not long ago), but that's the way it goes.
So don't knock knowing Latin roots and its aid in vocabulary recognition. I know its value from hard experience!</p>
<p>I agree that it can be helpful in learning English vocabulary to be aware of Latin and Greek word roots. I've never had to pay for a test-prep course to learn them, and there are many popular books on that subject.</p>
<p>Narcissa, I partially disagree with what you're saying. There are PLENTY of people with natural talent who still don't score too well on the SAT because of the way the test is structured. I will agree, however, that being an avid reader will help a ton with verbal. All the people from my high school who read books endlessly all got 800 on Verbal, which was pretty crazy. Once you read enough literature over the years, your vocabulary is large enough such that you don't need to use strategic guessing to get answers right because you know what a word means straight from the getgo. Same with reading the passages -- your critical reading skills are more finely-tuned and you're more easily able to pick out the relevant details and indicators.</p>
<p>Math, however, I feel is a different story. Since the curve is a bit wacky, I've seen some really smart math dudes barely break 700. Plenty of people get 800 Math IIC without a sweat but end up with a much lower SAT1 Math score because of the nature of the questions and time allotted.</p>
<p>Sure, you may be far above the level of math required to 800 the test, but if you don't know what to expect, odds are you're going to forget some simple relation or equation. Also, the time crunch means you don't have time to sit there and solve answers out carefully (ie. deriving the sidelengths for a 30-60-90 triangle, for instance. You should just know it). It's easier when you see a problem, recognize the type of question involved, and immediately throw down the relevant problem-solving strategies. There are plenty of people smarter than me when it comes to math, but I was literally done with the Math section in like a quarter of the time required just because I knew what to expect, with the 800 to go with it. </p>
<p>Being naturally talented in math/reading/writing will serve you well for the SAT, granted. But again, just because a soldier may be strong and sharp-eyed doesn't mean he'd survive on a battlefield if he hasn't inspected the terrain and developed a strategy. If you can do well without the prep, then congrats, more power to you! But for most people, it is best to prepare. It's a worthwhile investment to do so.</p>
<p>I've never seen the inside of an SAT prep class, and I've never opened any study book. Managed a 1530/2330 all the same. No, I don't believe in test prep books or courses.</p>
<p>
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I've seen some really smart math dudes barely break 700. Plenty of people get 800 Math IIC without a sweat but end up with a much lower SAT1 Math score because of the nature of the questions and time allotted.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Because the SAT-IIC curve is too easy. SAT1 math measures problem solving skills. What do you mean smart?
Smart may not be equivalent to hard-working. My nephew paid Kaplan test prep and took SAT1 (the old one) 3 times but could not break 1250. He had high class rank though because he worked hard.</p>
<p>
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There are PLENTY of people with natural talent who still don't score too well on the SAT because of the way the test is structured.
[/quote]
lol that's what I said wasn't it? I said that people who score an 800 on Math does't necessarily mean that they're naturally talented. Oh and I think that it depends on how you define "naturally talented." I guess if you mean how much you know prior to studying, then you CAN be naturally talented for the SATs. and lol, the valedictorian from my school last year didn't know anything about the SATs--she took it once and the PSAT once. No practice tests, definitely no tutoring or anything, and she scored a perfect 2400 on both the first try.</p>
<p>I strongly dislike the common CC belief that the high SAT scores certain students earn are the result of paying for expensive test-prep courses.</p>
<p>As other users have written in this thread, most of the thousand-dollar private one-on-one courses do not any new information; it's all there in that $15 book at B&N.</p>
<p>I think the whole "you only got that score because you paid for it" argument is incredibly rude, condescending, and not at all true.</p>
<p>The ONLY benefit I see from test preparation agencies is that they provide to you with actual TESTS, most of the time real tests, or even tests from books/their own tests. </p>
<p>What they don't give you is the discipline and motivation to study. I took various courses for the SAT/SAT II's, but they really didn't do much for me. It wasn't till early this senior year where I really motivated myself to study so that I could get into a good college, and I ended up doing good on the Math Level 2 and ACT, both tests in which I took no courses on.</p>
<p>In my limited experience, the results of SAT and ACT tests are inversely proportionate to the amount of time and money spent in trying to improve them. My kids scored high with little prep; my daughter prepped least of all (she took two 1 hour practice tests for the ACT and then took the test itself twice and that was it) and scored the highest in the family (34.) Her friends in our very affluent community underwent thousands of dollars worth of prep courses and scored about what I would have expected anyway - mid to high 20s. I'm really unconvinced of the actual efficacy of any means of prepping for the tests, and most skeptical about paid instructors, which one of my sons tried for the PSAT with the result of lowering his score!</p>
<p>or, worse still, even fewer. A student might just as well study with the Blue Book for a lot less money, and then use each year's official SAT practice test, available for free from almost any high school.</p>
<p>I definitely believe in Kaplan for the SAT I...it impoved me approx. 500 points in 4 months. Of course, a lot of that work was my own studying, but Kaplan really structured it well.</p>
<p>For all other tests, I usually just try to find a good review book and when in doubt, I always choose princeton review because they seem to be generally good across the board.</p>
<p>
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The true smart ones once score the ace (800) on one subject, most likely he will stay at that level. However the mediocre ones may get 800 this time, drop down next time falling into the college board statitics curve.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I got an 800 on the math section in one testing and a 760 on the next...does that make me mediocre too?</p>
<p>are u kidding...i know USAMO ppl who have NOT gotten 750+ on the SAT math. are they mediocre at math? maybe (to an IMOer)...but not in the SAT sense</p>
<p>Odysseytigger notes,"b) the results you report demonstrate a correlation not a causation</p>
<p>do not these exceptionally disciplined and driven students also apply those traits to their regular studies and are not they also at the top of their class?
Why would it be a surprise that such students do well on their SATs?
How much worse do you think they would have done had they self studied instead? I'd imagine not worse at all."</p>
<p>Response: Perhaps you are right since we will never know. However, almost every kid that participated in this long period of tutoring did very well. Is it a causation or corellation? I can't answer that.</p>
<p>Just my opinion: For a bright student who has attended a reasonably good high school in the US, taking an expensive test-prep course would be a poor use of both money and time. In fact, the whole idea of "studying" for the SAT seems odd to me. </p>
<p>A little practice is definitely useful: For example, the student needs to know the conventions for entering the answers to the non-multiple-choice math questions, and it's good to recognize the testers' hobby-horses for the writing section--but even working through the entire College Board book of real SAT's seems like overkill to me. </p>
<p>QuantMechPrime tried all the writing sub-sections of two of the "real" SAT's and a few math sub-sections. We admired the Xiggi method, but in reality, there was no time available to use it. QMP took the SAT once in 7th grade for talent search and once in junior year. The outcome was fine. Good friend of QMP worked the SAT question-of-the-day between registration and the test, did nothing else, and scored 2400, on the first try (not counting 7th grade).</p>
<p>A second post addresses the other issues raised by the OP.</p>
<p>There are some cases in which I think a test-prep course would be a good idea:</p>
<p>1) The student comes from a different culture and/or the student has spent several years in schools outside the U.S. The CR and W questions, in particular, are not culture-neutral, in my opinion. About 25 years ago, there was an informal report in Harper's magazine, by a staff member who distributed questions and possible answers from the verbal section--but not the reading selection on which they were based--and asked other staffers to select the right answers, without seeing the passage itself. As I recall, the Americans had relatively high scores (something like 7-9 correct, out of 10). The sole outlier was a very well educated British citizen, who wasn't familiar with American testing conventions.
(I do think that some progress toward culture and class-neutrality has been made over time with the SAT's. I seem to recall a sample essay question from the SAT II Writing test, years ago, which focused on country clubs!)</p>
<p>2) The student has not previously taken multiple-choice achievement or aptitude tests in the course of schooling. QMP's school had wide-ranging standardized tests in grades 3, 6, 8, and 10, as well as state tests in 4, 5, 7, 8, and 11 (now expanded to all grades). This was more than enough general "practice." But if a student has not seen a standardized multiple-choice test before, a prep course might be worthwhile.
Incidentally, for students who will be taking the GRE's, MCAT's, LSAT's, or GMAT's at the end of college, quick re-familiarization with standardized multiple-choice tests could be useful (a book, not a course, is enough), because the students will probably not see any other standardized tests during college.</p>
<p>3) The student's math courses were weak, or the student has simply forgotten some of the mathematics covered. An earlier poster cited the case of a student who had forgotten the side ratios in a 30-60-90 triangle. Just relearning that one fact would probably boost the math score by 20 points, all by itself.</p>