<p>An article in USA Today suggests that SAT prep courses may not be worth it. Of course, it's a sample of one, so you may want to take it with a grain of salt. Or lump.</p>
<p>I have witnessed this countless times. People <em>think</em> that by paying $350 an hour (yes, we have a guy in our area, with several offices, who charges this much), they are buying their way into HYP. Truth is, I have seen parents pay thousands and thousands of dollars in tutoring or classes, and some kids have little to no improvment.</p>
<p>Many kids can practice themselves to higher scores, just by taking a bunch of practice tests in the book put out by the College Board. Of course, that takes more discipline than the enforced three hour weekly test at Kaplan, but comes at a very small fraction of the cost.</p>
<p>My gripe is that parents and kids are hoodwinked into thinking these prep courses are something they have to have. It's big business, out there in the test prep world, and some of those guys are laughing all the way to the bank, even as the same kids are scoring 490 again and again.</p>
<p>"My gripe is that parents and kids are hoodwinked into thinking these prep courses are something they have to have."</p>
<p>Exactly. And it works.</p>
<p>I think the benefit of these "courses" is the unmotivated child having to prepare and actually do something before the test vs. doing nothing.</p>
<p>So....weigh that benefit. "having to go to class" vs. i will worry about that tomorrow.</p>
<p>I think that in itself is a benefit but not worth the thousands some are paying.
Sign up your chld for EVERY free SAT test given by all these services,kaplan, princeton, etc. Group classes can't work on your child's weaknesses....tutors can.</p>
<p>Studies I've read show very little improvement in SAT scores (maybe 20 points?) after 40+ hours of preparation. The only benefit I see is that the time is set aside for practice. Any student can follow some at-home program, a la Xiggi's method, and improve. After some point, no amount of preparation will compensate for a poor vocabulary, or the fact that a student hasn't read much for the past ten years, or that they never learned Algebra 1. The only benefit of any preparation, as far as I can see, is that students become more familiar with the format of the exams and the types/categories of questions.</p>
<p>I agree with atlmom that the main benefit of a course is that it forces the kid to practice.</p>
<p>Of course, a cheap course can do this as well as an expensive one can.</p>
<p>My kids both took a cheap (less than $300) course offered through our school system. Worked out fine.</p>
<p>That's why I love CC! I just read the article in the OP; in it was a link to a site that offers a free SAT and GRE online prep program. DD was thinking about taking the GRE's this summer, (is returning home from overseas TODAY :) )so I will be able to provide her this link.
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Sign up on Number2.com, a site created by two Harvard University graduate students and a physics professor. It offers free, comprehensive prep courses online for the SAT, ACT and GRE.
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:)</p>
<p>My son took the SAT review course before his SAT I in March....he did 1430/2140....he took the SAT I again in May and did 1450 / 2230. Can't say how much the course helped since he took it before the first exam... but, personally, I think the $ 1,000 was well spent...</p>
<p>The problem arises when parents feel that they <em>must</em> spend $1000 for test prep or otherwise their child will not be competitive. Even the admissions offices promote test prep by saying that middle and upper-middle class students are expected to get better test scores because they have the resources for test prep. (It should also be noted that economically disadvantaged students <em>never</em> have this option.)</p>
<p>I also believe that the same results can be attained by self-prep. But how many teens have the motivation to do so?<br>
As a music educator, I believe that people can also teach themselves to play a musical instrument up to a certain level of competency- but how many take lessons anyway because they need the structure? They need a "weekly assignment" and to have to answer to someone.<br>
That's where the private tutors come in. I've actually had friends ask ME if I would "oversee" their kids' SAT study sessions- what they really want is someone to make sure their kid is actually doing something instead of frittering away the time daydreaming or playing computer games.
Most of the people here on CC either have students who are self-motivated, or are students who are self-motivated. That's not the real world though.</p>
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Even the admissions offices promote test prep by saying that middle and upper-middle class students are expected to get better test scores because they have the resources for test prep.
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<p>Do they actually say that, or do they say that they have better resources in general? My kids didn't do any test prep, but they had the resource of having two parents with grad degrees. Even in the absense of a stellar school system, just the fact that reading, thinking, exploring, and seeking of knowledge were the air they breathed gave them all the test prep they needed. And yes, this was a huge advantage over poorer kids, many of whom have such sub-par school systems, coupled often with under-educated, over-burdened parents, that test prep is the least of their issues.</p>
<p>I agree with Garland. Same thing with my Ss.</p>
<p>Their school does provide free SAT prep, which apparently is not made use of as much as it should. </p>
<p>I also agree with the importance of providing structure when kids are not self-motivated. I wonder, however, if the same thing could not be achieved with a SAT prep book (around $30) and a college student at $20 an hour, as opposed to $350 an hour tutor? Or a parent willing to spend time monitoring the kid to make sure that s/he is not doodling or downloading stuff from the web instead of actively going through the SAT prep exercises?</p>
<p>In the end, unfortunately, colleges usually look at the numbers.....not whether a kid "tried hard" or "took the courses", etc.... A $ 1000 course, IMO, was well worth the cost to give my son an extra chance at doing his best on the test. No way of knowing how much the course helped...I can say that it did not hurt and probably gave him some extra confidence.</p>
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Or a parent willing to spend time monitoring the kid to make sure that s/he is not doodling or downloading stuff from the web instead of actively going through the SAT prep exercises?
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<p>The interpersonal dynamics of this sort of arrangement would be so painful in some households that families might consider shelling out the money for a course to be the lesser evil.</p>
<p>In our case, I felt the money spent for tutoring was worth my not having to nag S to do practice tests, which he unquestionably, absolutely would not have done had he not known the tutor was coming weekly and he had to prepare. He has only taken the SAT's once, but his scores rose over 300 point from his second round of PSAT's for which he did not prepare at all. Very helpful for me not to caught in the unfortnate dyanamic of being the one breathing down his neck to make sure he was doing what was necessary, which would only have resulted in bad feelings and little else.</p>
<p>So how much non-parental time was purchased with $1000?</p>
<p>Sometimes paying a lot for things makes them work better (for example, expensive diets usually work better than the cheap ones -- paying a lot of money sure seems to get people motivated, at least as long as they are paying...) The problem wit SAT prep classes is that parents are paying, and the kids need to get motivated. This does not usually work nearly as well.</p>
<p>Our GC always tells parents and students at the first pre-college-process meeting that the best test takers at our school self-study. I can't think of anything that can be done in the class that can't be done independently with a $15 book. But it does take some discipline.</p>
<p>Yes^^^ and a lot of kids at the age of 16/17 do not have the discipline. They have the smarts, they just can't see the end of the tunnel yet and for some, they could care less at that stage whether they go to a public, private, selective, non-selective college. So they don't really put anything into it when they're on their own.</p>
<p>I agree with the idea that paying someone $20 an hour to monitor might have the same effect as $350 an hour professional, if the babysitter knows what the student is supposed to be doing.</p>
<p>"Our GC always tells parents and students at the first pre-college-process meeting that the best test takers at our school self-study. "</p>
<p>I believe this says more about the student than the process, though. The best students in general are going to be those who are self-motivated. So are they good test takers because they are disciplined students, or are they good test takers because they self-studied? I say it's both.</p>
<p>In most families, if a teen is unmotivated and recalcitrant to begin with, the worst possible thing would be to get the parents involved in overseeing their SAT prep. They need a third party.</p>
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paying a lot of money sure seems to get people motivated, at least as long as they are paying...) The problem wit SAT prep classes is that parents are paying, and the kids need to get motivated.
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In most families, if a teen is unmotivated and recalcitrant to begin with, the worst possible thing would be to get the parents involved in overseeing their SAT prep. They need a third party.
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<p>You are both probably right. So, really the question I should ask is: how many hours of prep as opposed to how expensive?</p>
<p>The problem is an over reliance on these test preps, my D used the Xiggi method and a few practice books I purchased from Amazon. Her friend took the test prep and he still not satisfied with his scores. He has the same GPAs as my kid or slightly better.</p>