You know, make too much to get much (if any) financial aid, but too little to full pay in cash. Isn’t the best way to pick up merit money the test score? This block is stingy when it comes to a $500-1000 course that could net their child thousands if not tens of thousands in scholarships. Hundreds for a swim or softball league—for the <10% chance Jr. can get an athletic scholarship—is no problem, of course.
Just tried to talk a family into it. Told them it was the best investment we ever made. They looked at me like I was crazy. Naturally, when college bills roll in it’ll be HOW ARE WE EVER GOING TO AFFORD THIS?!
Yeah, we’re in an upper middle class burb and it’s a religion. Family lives in a normal middle class suburb and I’d bet 1-2% are in any prep. But you can argue it’s the middle middle class that benefit the most.
Some people are better at self paced learning and prefer it. I have a friend who did the prep course and got the exact same score (2060). She was trying to get into UT-A.
The prep classes are good at helping students pick low hanging fruit, but I don’t think they do much to push kid into the higher levels needed for merit at a lot of schools. There is nothing there that the Xiggi method (elsewhere on CC) won’t do for a student who is self studying. I would not usually recommend a prep course except for a student with a score a lot lower than their GPA suggests and that for some reason isn’t a good candidate for self-study (maybe not motivated, or maybe really no one they can ask for help when they are stumped while studying).
@garrisonNY I am totally with you on this. ‘$500-1000 course that could net their child thousands if not tens of thousands in scholarships.’ For D13 we went thru Sylvan and paid $895.00 SAt went up from 1170 to 1250, right in the middle of her dream schools’ range. For D17 we hired a private tutor at $80.00 an hour for under 10 sessions. SAT shot up from 1240 to 1390. That can indeed be worth thousand in merit money, or even D get into her dream school. We tried buying the book for $20.00. Very economical, except she didn’t open it. (And some may she was not motivated, but she learned what she needed to do with tutor).
OP also points out the thousands of dollars families spend for travel teams, hoping for some scholarship. That’s fun, but a longshot for paying out. Even when the kid is very good and could play for a D3 school, they’ll often opt to just go to a D1 state school, with no scholarship at all.
Considering how many thousands any parent from whatever economic class is going to lay out for college, test prep has to be the shortest and least expensive investment you can make. Some can whine it ain’t fair that some get test prep and some don’t, but that’s the way it is. The family that didn’t listen to OP, that’s the crazy ones.
I thought the answer to the question of why middle class families don’t pay for test prep was going to be that studies show it doesn’t make much of a difference. Students on CC often report that their scores go up even when studying on their own.
But apparently the research shows that the effects of paid test prep programs are modest (and not large), but even modest increases make a difference to colleges. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/05/20/testprep
At my school, most honors students didn’t take the PSAT, and I’m guessing that most of them didn’t check out a prep book from the library or anything either. I don’t really know why, except that they had other priorities and they might not have thought that scores could be improved very much.
Clarification to my post: D17 made 1240 on old SAT and 1390 on new SAT, which reduces the gain somewhat, as new test scroes run higher. But she did take the old SAT twice, Nov 2015 and Jan 2016, and made 1240 both times, nealry the same thing on both as they superscored just to 1260. And all were SAT actual tests. Folks should not be swindled by services that give ‘their’ test, and then after the course the ‘new’ score is 250 points higher!
OP mentions the family Op talked to, and I assume the parents. It is parents’ responsibility to point out importance of testing, as as halcyonheather says, students have other priorities. How many will actually study on their own? I can hear anecdotes of motivated kids but who many really do?
Article referenced on #9 concludes that ‘some test prep raises scores, even if the precise size of the gains isn’t clear.’
I like this explanation: '…a relationship between what students pay and their diligence and corresponding gains. “There is an aspect of ‘my Mom’s paying $3,000 so I better do this right,’”
Many students who have the ability to score well enough on a standardized test to earn substantial merit money aspire to attend the types of colleges that don’t offer merit money based on test scores.
Substantial merit aid is available at quite a few top 50 universities and many more top 100 universities. The merit aid isn’t guaranteed based on test scores, but test scores are a big factor.
Upper income parent here. We don’t qualify for FA.
We could easily afford prep course & private tutor, but entire family thought it was a ridiculous waste of money. So we spent a whopping $20/kid for an SAT studyguide book, while classmates forked out thousands for a prep course. We supplemented with free practice tests downloaded from College Board website.
I enrolled D in a prep course (at a discount so it wasn’t that expensive). Did she use it? Not really, so for us it was a waste of money. The only thing she used was the practice materials they sent her for the courses. And she really did minimal prep - think cramming for 2 days before each test. She did great on all her standardized tests and didn’t need the prep course but it made me feel good to get it for her since we couldn’t afford test prep when I was in school - not even study guides.
“Just tried to talk a family into it.” - For some, the general course like this is simply waste of money and time. The self-preparation that is focusing on a student’s specific needs is much more effective. In addition, both SAT / ACT are very low level test that aim primarily at the middle school material. Many advanced kids simply need re-fresh this material by taking practice tests and going over their mistakes. If you are not a top caliber student with the top HS GPA, the SAT / ACT score is not going to bring you any Merit awards anyhow. GPA has a heavier weight.
We just went through the college application process. We are a middle class family. DS16 is a very good student who graduated in top 1% of his class. We enrolled him in a moderately priced SAT prep class right before the beginning of his junior year. IMO , it was money well spent for him to learn test taking strategies to score well on the test. In our state , there are scholarships provided which are distributed on a tier system. The difference between the top tier and middle tier was 1800 dollars for freshman year and 2500 dollars sophomore through senior year. That’s a huge difference over the cost of 4 years. DS qualified for the highest scholarship the first time that he took the SAT. Would he have qualified without the test prep? Maybe, but we felt like it was a wise investment.
While many students who " have the ability to score well enough on standardized test to earn substantial merit money aspire to attend the types of colleges that don’t offer merit money based on test scores" , many students may look at Honors colleges as “safety” options. These schools tend to offer substantial merit based on test scores. Scoring well on his tests has proven to be very helpful financially for our family .
I have another son who is currently a sophomore in HS. He is taking advantage of test prep at school , but he will also be enrolled in the same class that his brother took at the beginning of his junior year. It was a positive experience for our family . That said, it truly is a personal choice for each family to make based on their personal needs.
Both of my kids took a cheap (around $200) eight-session SAT prep course offered by our school system in the summer session, the summer before junior year. Both said that they found it helpful. And, as juniors, both got PSAT and SAT scores that were good enough for the types of schools they planned to apply to.
Would they have done as well with no prep course? Would they have done better with a more extensive prep course? We don’t know. And given the results they obtained, we don’t especially care.
We found that the amount of Merit money to the same applicant vary widely from college to college, even from one in-state public to another in the same state. And another surprise was that some privates will offer much more than most publics. Just got to snoop around and apply widely and smartly. My D’s Merit offers ranged from only $3k / year to full tuition Merit awards (at different in-state publics in the same state) and one private offered the most money of them all. All of her Merit awards were based on combo of the ACT score and the GPA. She did not apply to a single school that would not offer her Merit which was determined thru lengthy research prior to application. All research and ACT prep were done at home. The SAT prep class was a waste of time by her admission and her SAT score was lower than self-prepared ACT (comparison determined thru conversion). She was not the great test taker and her drag has always been a slower reading. She always had to prepare for any tests to do well.
They have higher sticker prices, so it’s most important to compare the amounts you would pay. (I know this is obvious, but I feel like people talk about scholarships as if they’re cash prizes and not discounts on something that still might be unaffordable.)