<p>Mini, I like your analogy except that it's demeaning to thousands of people who can't afford the track (if you mean test prep, living in Lake Forest IL or Wellesley MA, skiiing on vacation and taking ballet and cello lessons). They still take their kids to libraries; they visit museums on "free Thursday's" or whenver, they go to concerts in small civic centers and historical societies which cost nothing; they follow baseball and help their kids do math tricks in their head, and they read the newspaper and get their kids a dictionary for the hard words.</p>
<p>I know dozens of low income families who can't afford the racing fees but it is grossly offensive to assume that they're "pulling milkcarts" . Many of these kids end up in elite schools and to suggest otherwise is really taking your private Pell grant thing way too far.</p>
<p>Many of them DON'T end up in elite schools, and the percentage, despite the rhetoric, is shrinking, not growing. Look at the numbers for yourself, and wrestle with a different conclusion.</p>
<p>It is not the analogy that is demeaning, but the reality. And that's the really sad part about it. Except...it is not so sad. Because most of the kids you are referring to will do just fine, thank you, as you and I know very well. It's the thoroughbreds at the prestige institutions who lose out, by lack of exposure to "a horse of a different color".</p>
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<p>...and most people who do this kind of reviewing employ a tutor so in that regard it benefits those who can afford it.<<</p>
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<p>Based on what I see, I think the prevalence of the use of SAT tutors is way overstated. We live in a middle class neighborhood. All the college bound kids take the SAT. Most do okay; some do pretty well, and a few are near perfect. But I do not know of a single one of them, including those who pulled down near-perfect scores, who hired an SAT tutor.</p>
<p>When D's turn came along, I thought about tutors. I looked at the prices. But in the end, like her friends, D went out and did it on her own, and did very well. The closest thing she ever had to tutoring was me drilling her on some bio facts for her MolBio SAT II that she needed a good score for. The only thing we paid for in that case was a Bio cram book that most folks of even modest means could afford. I did nothing specific to prepare her for the SAT I.</p>
<p>So where does all this tutoring take place? Is that an east coast thing?</p>
<p>Mini,
your thoroughbred analogy is making my head hurt. Thoroughbred racing is for horses in the studbook only. Other breds have other racing venues. The interesting thing about thoroughbreds is that, for all the breeding, racing time have not gone up appreciably in the last half-century or so. Maybe intermixing other breeds would help - but if you do, you can't race them as thoroughbreds. Hum, maybe the analogy's better than I thought.</p>
<p>not too sure where you are geographically, but test prep is big on the west coast. I know some of top kids at our HS that have literally spent every Fri eve (3-9 pm) and Sat (9-3 pm) doing nothing but practicing for the SAT. Many of these kids will earn NMSF, bcos they already topped 220 on the PSAT. But, unfortunately, admission to our state flagship U's is nearly as intense as that of the NE kids trying to get into Ivies and top LACs. So, anything to boost one's chances seems to be worth it at any cost (I guess).</p>
<p>Also, every article I've seen showed that PR and Kaplan, amoung others, are doing record biz this year.</p>
<p>btw: some kids do eschew it all....while noble, it could leave them at a competitive disadvantage</p>
<p>In the Cleveland area, kids at Shaker Heights High (one of the major Ivy feeder schools) frequently do the prep route pre-PSAT to increase their NM chances. Kids in the majority of the other publics don't prep.</p>
<p>I have often wondered the same thing, Coureur. I'm sure there are places in northeast Jersey where tutors are a reality, but I''ve never met a kid in out town we used one. I thought maybe it was a CC thing.</p>
<p>This year, our hs is offering free Princeton Review classes to 120 students (I'm not sure on what basis; the graduating class has about 400 students). This is on top of what my S called endless vocab lists in practically all classes; they were designed to help with the SAT-V (at least until last January). But I don't personally know anyone who has had tutors, and my S's friends don't generally talk about their SAT performance.</p>
<p>My kids both prepared on their own, using the standard books available at any bookstore, and I feel that their final scores were a good reflection of their actual abilities in both cases. I think the main advantage of a tutor or prep course may be to force the student to spend the time on studying. If the student has the self-motivation and focus to study on his or her own, a tutor or course is probably not necessary in most cases.</p>
<p>My daughter didn't prepare for SAT- although if she was motivated she might have by using resources at library-
She took the SAT once in 7th grade- PSAT once in 10th and again in 11th. SAT in spring of 11th and again fall of 12th. No prep- and her scores from 11th to 12th were pretty similar .
She attended a prep school for which she received aid. I would have liked to homeschool her- but then she could get a scholarship for school, hard to find scholarship to stay home ;)
I don't remember hearing any students say that they took a prep course, I don't think that parents thought that it would help frankly. You either know it or you don't, and from what I have heard- test scores are only a small % of what is considered on apps, particulary for private /smaller schools. Time is probably better spent polishing your essay.
Her sisters public inner city school offers free Princeton prep courses to 9th and 10 graders and another prep course for 11th and 12 grade.
( blanking on name), they have lots of resources- free- for students.
Great placement in colleges and in jobtraining programs. Great communication between admission offices including Ivy. Most of the kids at the school- and I emphasize this is an very diverse school, almost 80% take the SAT or ACT. Great graduation rate.
But I agree with the editorial in todays NYT
Bill Gates is wrong!
THe attention shouldn't be heavily weighted toward high schools, attention needs to be paid to the elementary and middle schools where these kids aren't learning what they are supposed to be learning. In high school, these kids don't get an automatic pass anymore- so they are more noticable, but the gap began much earlier.</p>
<p>We live in suburban San Diego. Since she knows a lot more of the local HS kids than I do, I asked W if she ever heard of anybody hiring an SAT tutor. She said only one: a recruited athlete who had a big scholarship offer from Stanford waiting for him provided he raised his SAT above some certain mark. He succeeded. Everybody else just buys the review books from the bookstore. </p>
<p>She also said where she thinks the SAT tutors are big business is in the Asian communities - driving through some of the heavily Asian neighborhoods in LA, she said every little strip mall has a liquor store, a Chinese restaurant, and an SAT prep school.</p>
<p>For what it is worth, I was working in Taipei a few weeks ago and 8th grade kids there are doing SAT prep, specifically for the essays they will be writing in 3 years.</p>
<p>When SAT prep is your primary EC it is pretty pathetic...</p>