<p>I've heard a few people on these forums object to preparation for the SAT I. They think those who use the Princeton Review courses or books to prepare should be required to disclose this on college applications. They complain about the unfair advantage that students from richer families have over poorer families because the former can afford those expensive courses while the latter cannot. (The richer students do have an unfair advantage, but it should be noted that the books are MUCH cheaper than the courses.)</p>
<p>I consider preparation for the SAT I through Princeton Review courses or books to be 100% legitimate. If studying for the SAT I is cheating, then reading the chapter for class is also cheating. Inquiries from admissions officers about whether or not students used such help is an invasion of privacy.</p>
<p>The SAT I, however, is BS. The main problem is that the SAT I has very little to do with education and is little more than a mind game that takes time away from real learning. If I had my way, all colleges and scholarship sponsors would stop asking for SAT I scores, and the College Board and ETS would stop administering this dumb and irrelevant test. I earned high scores on the PSAT, SAT, and GRE, and I know that what I did to prepare was irrelevant to my subsequent education.</p>
<p>The SAT preparation business is BIG business. Those folks are raking in the money, and their bottom line is profit. </p>
<p>Some kids benefit hugely from these courses, but those are the same kids who would have benefited from the $20 book. Many kids see no benefit in their scores, or not enough to justify the thousands of dollars in cost.</p>
<p>But the bottom line is, for the kids who do benefit are fortunate to have families that can afford the exhorbitant costs. Many kids have families who can't, and thus it is non-leveler on any already unlevel playing field.</p>
<p>No one can stop such businesses in a free market, but let's not even pretend that it is "fair".</p>
<p>< No one can stop such businesses in a free market, but let's not even pretend that it is "fair". >
The Princeton Review isn't the unfair entity. The colleges and the scholarship sponsors that insist on having SAT I scores are unfair. SAT I scores only matter because the ETS and College Board spread so much propaganda and so many entities actually believe it. People who believe that SAT I scores are a good indicator of educational achievement are just as deluded as the Kansas wingnuts who think evolution is a kooky conspiracy theory but everyone needs to know Unintelligent Design.</p>
<p>Complaining that richer kids can take SAT prep classes is like complaining that richer kids can go to private schools. No one said that life is fair. It isn't and no laws or social/political engineering is going to change that.</p>
<p>Wow, rich people have advantages that poor people don't? What a shocker!</p>
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<p>They think those who use the Princeton Review courses or books to prepare should be required to disclose this on college applications.<<</p>
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<p>They do? I've never heard anyone propose this.</p>
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<p>They think those who use the Princeton Review courses or books to prepare should be required to disclose this on college applications.<<</p>
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<p>Gee.... why stop at that???? why not require people to disclose whether they have a parent who is a teacher (free tutoring) or they have a parent who is ..... (whatever). Where would it end????</p>
<p>I don't get it - using the books to study is unfair? Poor kids can't afford it? Funny, but D borrowed the books from the public library, renewed them a couple times, studied them, learned the techniques, took the practice tests, and scored huge! Anyone can afford this. She did this with the AP study books, as well. Didn't cost me a cent, and helped her immensely. Our school knows that all the kids can't afford a review course, so they instituted their own. It does cost, however, but only $30 and it takes 2 Saturdays. Pretty cost-effective. There are resources available out there for the poorer kids. The kids just have to find them. My D did. I didn't know the library carried those books, but she found out and saved me money.</p>
<p>"But the bottom line is, for the kids who do benefit are fortunate to have families that can afford the exhorbitant costs. Many kids have families who can't, and thus it is non-leveler on any already unlevel playing field."</p>
<p>Universities now expect the middle class and richer to pay for these courses. That is exactly why URM and impoverished students can get into good colleges with SATs that are 200 pts lower than others. The admission officers do the leveling themselves. Better off students may complain that it isn't fair that URM/inner city applicants have an "advantage", but the truth is, disadvantages students are exactly that - disadvantaged. Adcoms know this - and correct for it.</p>
<p>I'm not endorsing the courses. Some kids take the SATs without studying, and it reflects perfectly their level of achievement in high school. Others, though, may need to know HOW to take the test so that things match. A study course will not help a student get an artificially high score. It's not possible. All it will do is teach him how to score the best he can. Parents who think their C student will get Ivy League worthy SAT scores after taking a Kaplan/Princeton Review course are setting themselves up for disappointment.</p>
<p>The SAT <strong><em>SHOULD</em></strong> measure intelligence. Not IQ, but overall intelligence, and prove a reliable indicator of how a high school senior will do in his first year or so of college. The fact that students can prepare for such a test, however, means that the reliability of the test goes down. If the SAT truly measured intelligence (which it does not), then no amount of preparation could change one's score. As it stands, however, anybody's rich parents can go out and pay $3000 for a Kaplan prep course, which allows their kid to come in every wednesday night for a couple of hours and learn "tactics" and "strategies" to do better on the SAT.</p>
<p>On such a test, however, "tactics" and "strategies" should not exist. There should not be exploitable patterens and such. Prep courses (and books, to an extent), allow students to get a jump by identifying such patterns and teaching them how to exploit them to their advantage. Many students can see point increases of up to 300 points in many cases. ex: 1200/1600 --> 1500/1600 is possible and has happened.</p>
<p>The problem is, however, if you can guess.. is that these courses are ALWAYS expensive, and basically unaffordable for families who live in poverty. The tests are always expensive enough (ie. around $30 for the SAT, $20 for the SATII's each, $82 for each AP-- JEEZ!, etc.), and to have to pay for prep courses just to see a score increase is not feasible for most families. Thus, we call the prep courses unfair.. because everybody can't afford them.</p>
<p>But what's new about the rich being able to afford things that the rest of us cannot? Nothing. What I wrote above is simply the ARGUMENT.</p>
<p>actually, paying for courses is a waste of money for most kids. The books are extremely inexepensive on amazon, or, can be borrowed for free from teh local libary. Check out the Xiggi method on the SAT thread....self-prep is ALL that is required for a fine score. Remember, the math portion is Alg I and Geometry, plus 3-5 questions of Alg II. A kid could miss all the Alg II problems and still score close ~700.</p>
<p>My kid prepped with a book and it helped a lot. Being familiar with the types of questions asked and practicing to increase speed can make a huge difference. I agree with Xiggi on using prep books--why waste $ on a course?</p>
<p>Most people have $20 for a book. Or have a library/friend to lend them one. What they don't have is the diligence to sit down for eight 4-hour periods in the months before the test and do all those practice tests, and to spend several more hours per week scoring the tests, analyzing the wrong answers, and doing the other practice material in the book. Anyone CAN do this, but most students just won't. (Too much like work? Don't care about increasing your SAT scores? That's your choice. . .)</p>
<p>We have SAT tutors in our area who charge between $275-350 AN HOUR. And despite all their promises, many kids improve minimally, if at all. </p>
<p>The strategies are in the $20 book. People buy the private tutors or courses because most kids aren't disciplined to sit down for the many hours independently, but the course or tutoring enforces the time frame and structure.</p>
<p>Incidentally, there are very few tests, even "true" IQ tests, which really measure aptitude. However, truth is, as on IQ tests, the more innate natural intelligence a person has, the better they will perform, be it on a standardized IQ test or the SAT. One can only prep a bit, but just as one cannot study oneself to go from an IQ of 100 to 130, one cannot study the SAT to go from a 400 to a 700 in any area. The gains are more modest, although clearly indicate that the SAT is a test one can prep for.</p>
<p>I think what some people are missing is that test prep doesn't just teach tricks. It also may help some students to better understand the problems. But the overall effect of test prep may be just to cut down on errors that come from unfamiliarity with the test question types or with certain rules (e.g., when to guess), how to pace oneself, and how to "relax." This isn't learning tricks, it's just adapting to the test situation, which may be very different from any kind of learning or testing situation that the students are familiar with. As Xiggi says, his method is basically just "practice, practice, practice."</p>
<p>That said, there is a significant random component to any standardized test, owing to factors over which the students may have little control such as how tired or sick they may be, poor test conditions (poor lighting, ventilation, noise), or simply the luck of the draw on the questions being asked that day. And so, just by chance alone, quite a few students are going to improve from one sitting to the next, and quite a few are going to get worse scores. The test prep industry and even many individual test takers will take (inappropriate) credit for "causing" these random improvements, while also sometimes acknowledging that there are no guarantees and through chance alone some kids' scores will go down.</p>
<p>I favor test preparation but not necessarily the test prep industry or the poor construction of the SAT that allows for some tricks to be used (though mainly preparation is just "practice"). Some kids don't need any special prep, much less a prep course. Unless they are driven or fanatical about perfecting their scores, they may be satisfied with the results of the first iteration and not feel it necessary to retake the test. Neither of my kids felt the need for special prep for the tests or repeating the tests (except for talent search experiences over the years). Other kids are doing to learn about the test through preparation. And still others are going to hope just to get "lucky" by retaking the test, whether or not they do any special prep.</p>
<p>People go on and on about the "unfair" advantages offered by taking expensive SAT prep courses, but I've always wondered: who is actually taking these courses? Not my D. She just bought one of the review booklets and worked with that a little while, and she got an excellent score. And not the other kids around here either. There may been a few lurking out there that I didn't hear about, but in our suburban middle class high school the only kid I heard of who took an SAT course was a recruited athlete who had to get his SAT score up to the minimum in order to qualify for his scholarship. (He succeeded.)</p>
<p>So who is taking all these classes? I dunno, maybe it's largely an urban thing. Let's see a show of hands. Who here did one of these expensive courses?</p>
<p>My d took a review course provided by her (public) high school for kids who scored above 160 on the sophomore PSAT. A nominal fee was charged (<$150). A.M classes the last two weeks of summer plus zero hour (6:30 a.m.) classes during the first two months of the school year. She did fine...NMF,SAT 2230 one sitting.</p>
<p>Also...the only kids at her school (that I know of) who took the expensive classes were the kids who blew it on their first SAT and freaked their parents out.</p>
<p>I'm sure you feel that way. But how do you know that your improvement had anything to do with the PR course? And what evidence do we have that it's worth it for the typical student? Many might improve without the course if they spent a few hours reading/practicing on their own, or even if they had do nothing except get a really good night's sleep before the test. For every kid who improves their score there is probably one whose score fell by the same amount.</p>
<p>Your "testimony," which may be based on real experience, can't prove anything about the average value (from a cost/benefit perspective) of taking these courses.</p>