The family I referenced has an older child at a large public college with low admissions standards. On their website it says a 22 on the ACT is $0; a 23 nets $6,000 in scholarships. We can debate whether or not prep “works” but I think most agree a student in that range can eke out an extra point re-freshening the material via some sort of prep.
Mosr of these families don’t have their child do ANYTHING outside of school. How long does it take mom and dad to earn $6,000?
I consider myself upper middle class and did not pay for 23yo S to go to a prep class and will probably not pay for 16yo D. 23yo S was able to increase his 1890 SAT score to 2180 with 10 minutes directed self study (and my help) over a 2 month period, five days a week. I found problems related to his needs, he did them while I prepared dinner and then I corrected them. We either moved on the next night or reviewed and did more of the same. 16yo D received a 1290 on the psat last year and a 31 on a practice ACT. She needs help with math and has been working problems on her own in a practice math SAT book all summer. She has not needed my prodding like S did. If she can’t pull her psat score up sufficiently this fall then we will pursue other methods, but I can’t see paying all that money for a prep class if we can do it ourselves.
^^^^^^ mamom Sounds like you got the same effect for free that people like me paid for, and that is great. Other kids and families are different, and some kids (tired of Dad harping about college) respond better to tutors. The important thing is for kid to do something to prepare. It can only be a positive, reviewing and anticipation and having a test taking strategy. Also, with our daughters, that we were paying for tutoring stressed the importance of SAT.
@garrisonNY mentioned that it is maybe the middle class who could benefit from test prep more than upper class, and I agree. Especially for publics like here in NC. At the info session at university where D13 ended up attending, ad rep said they looked at nothing but GPA, SAT, class rank. She laughed when asked if letters of rec were read. Even a slight rise in SAT or ACT can be difference in even getting in, whether or not it increases merit.
I think that the key to the success of a tutored prep class and/or @mamom approach is that the practice is recurring over days and weeks. I think SAT prep works, but SAT cram prepping doesn’t make a difference. I have one kid through the process…regular (weekly) study for about six weeks, about two hours a week of the ACT practice tests yielded a 3 point gain in the ACT senior year and actually…a 100 point gain on the SAT, even though no prep was done for SAT. To answer the question of the thread, I know that many middle class kids and parents think of the SAT as an intelligence test. if you aren’t smart enough, you won’t get a high score…so why prep?
Private tutor for the ACT was the best money we ever spent. Went from 26 on ACT to 33. It was all about test taking strategies vs. inherent intelligence. I have heard 32 is the “magic number” when it comes to higher merit awards but surely it varies school to school.
As a junior whose family is in the middle/middle or lower/middle class, I can say that I’m not going to get a prep class, and my older sister didn’t either. I am instead taking advantage of cheap/free resources, such as the $20 College Board test prep book and Khan Academy, which is free and also provided by College Board. I also downloaded a free PDF version of the Varsity Tutor’s SAT prep book. The way I see it (and my parents as well), only what the College Board releases can be considered legit, and I only downloaded the VT PDF because it was free, and while I will use it, I won’t consider it 100% legit.
I feel that SAT prep classes might’ve been more relevant and useful in the time of the old SAT, but with the new SAT there is little to no reference material, little to no experienced people who can teach the new SAT, etc. I will be self studying, although I might create a study group with a few of my friends. To me, an SAT prep class doesn’t seem like a sound investment, or a good use of my time, which I have little time for in between my part time job, my ECs, and my large amount of HW this year for my classes, at least for me. I don’t shoot people down for getting an SAT prep course if they feel they have the means, the time, and the need for one.
Link to the Varsity Tutor’s free SAT and ACT prep PDFs: http://www.varsitytutors.com/books
Some middle class families (like mine) don’t have several hundred dollars or more kicking around.
I did, however, invest in some prep books, thinking that I could use them for at least 2 of my kids, if not all 3. Then College Board changed the test…
Some families believe (usually mistakenly) that they will receive enough financial aid. Some rely on guidance counselors for this type of advice and never receive it. Most are too busy working and struggling to get by to scour the internet and learn this stuff.
Let us not judge.
And PS: if most students studied for the SAT/ACT, it would just raise the bar. Colleges would give the same amount of money to the same number of students, they would just require a higher score.
@mamom I did something very similar with my D17 - we got the red ACT book and she took a full diagnostic which showed she mostly needed to review the math section. I then gave her the choice of doing 15 minutes a day with me while dinner was cooking or having to attend a class the next town over. She immediately elected to work with me over dinner 
In the course of a month (and the crackACT web site) raised her math section from the initial 29 diagnostic to a 33 on the actual test in April by doing the problems then going over each one she got wrong until she figured it out.
Now, I have a pretty great relationship with my D in that way, we can work together easily. Some kids benefit much more from a class setting and it helps them focus. In either case, whether it’s a physical classroom, an online course, or some form of self study, I do definitely believe that prep works - even if it’s just to gain familiarity with the format of the questions and brushing up on some math they might not have seen since middle school.
ETA - the reason we embarked on any prep for the ACT was the fact that she’d gone into the PSAT pretty much blind and just missed the commended cutoff. If I’d realized that National Merit status actually mattered, I would have had her prep for the PSAT, because that middle school math review would have made the difference. I know now for my younger D!
Yes, I am surprised that more people don’t prepare for these tests. I don’t know anyone in our area who did a class, and almost no one who prepped. We could afford a class, but I don’t think they are the best use of time or money. I bought my kids a test prep book. I rather doubt the test prep instructors could score as well as my kids.
“We can debate whether or not prep “works” but I think most agree a student in that range can eke out an extra point re-freshening the material via some sort of prep.”
Not coming in specifically to contradict MiamiDAP, but I believe that there are cases where no prep is needed, and certainly not a prep course. Here are a couple of indicators that suggest to me that it is not worthwhile for a student to take a prep course:
I understand the anxiety that arises if students around yours are taking prep courses. In fact, I wondered briefly whether we were short-changing QMP by not using a prep service. However, time proved otherwise.
Another student in QMP’s class scored 800/800/800 on the SAT that has just recently been replaced, with prep that involved a few months’ subscription to CB’s SAT Question of the Day service, and that was it. We bought an SAT prep book from CB for QMP. A few sections of a few tests got tried out, but that was it.
There is one case where I think a prep course might be useful for a bright student: If the student or the student’s parents have come to the US from a different culture. The reading part of the SAT especially has many embedded cultural viewpoints, which not all cultures share. One needs either to have assimilated to US culture, or to be able to recognize when an SAT question is calling for the US-commonplace interpretation.
To give an example related to this: On another thread, some time ago, a young man asked why some scholarship program, science contest, or college application wanted to know the parents’ occupations. His parents were scientists. He wondered whether this would give him an advantage, because the people looking at the application would think that he was more likely to become a scientist, since his parents were scientists. I think it will be the consensus on this thread that it’s actually the opposite–he would often be disadvantaged by the fact that his parents are scientists, in any process that considers the student’s background advantages. Otherwise, it would generally be neutral, though perhaps with some admissions advantage for schools that are need-aware and where the student would be full pay. But the student clearly expected it to be advantageous. This sort of cultural mis-match can lead to misreadings of the SAT materials.
Test prep instructors from better test prep outfits can score better than your kids.
For example, the daughter of a friend worked as an English tutor between graduating from Brown and going to Harvard Law School and they made her sit for SAT.
Just to add: I think a lot of families do not have the cost of a commercial SAT prep program in their budgets. There was just recently a study asking if people could come up with $400 for an emergency, and a fairly large fraction of those responding said they could not.
The programs offered in the schools are different, and I suspect that each school district has its own database of outcomes of its programs.
From Post 28: ‘if most students studied for the SAT/ACT, it would just raise the bar.’ Yes. But regardless of how many are studying, the bar is being raised. And if is unprepared,
From Post 30: ’ I don’t know anyone in our area who did a class, and almost no one who prepped.’ But other kids somewhere else were prepping.
I understand the frustration that comes regarding the whole testing industry. That it is not a level playing field if you have to pay to play. Research I have seen says that the greatest impact on SAT/ACT is family income levels and having the benefits of good schools from kindergarten up. So ‘rich kids’ getting even more help via prepping makes it even more unfair.
But you cannot stop that competition. Seems to me the pragmatic thing is to consider what you can change. Whatever your kid’s ability or background, why not spend some hours and maybe some money to improve test scores? The fact that most are not going to invest that time or money or even interest just puts your kid in a better position.
Kudos to @Marg532 for taking the initiative to research this and do the work herself.
I can agree with most of the post by Petula Clark/William Faulkner, but I would like to reiterate that there are cases where the student does not need any prep classes. Then the parents can spend the money on something better.
The regular work in a good school system can provide preparation enough. I grew up in a factory town, and even there, the schoolwork that I had rendered “prep” superfluous.
I wanted to post this contrarian point of view specifically because some of QMP’s friends started taking prep classes in 9th grade, and I did seriously worry briefly whether QMP should, too. There is a lot of parental peer pressure involved, if you are in a community where most of the students prep. Then they can’t even tell whether they would have scored fine without it.
In my state, most middle-class families send their children to in-state schools. There is a threshold where if you have a minimum GPA and a minimum ACT/SAT score, you get the scholarship (which is renewable every year if a required GPA is attained). If you already have the GPA and you get that minimum score the first time you take the ACT, there really isn’t an incentive to test again - let alone spend money for an expensive prep course - just to get a higher score for bragging rights. Now, I know that the state flagship offers “chancellor’s scholarships” or such, but one qualification is to be in the Honors School, which means that the student is a liberal arts major.
Specifically, our high school offers free ACT prep courses in the summer, on Saturdays during the fall, and, for struggling students, as an actual class. So, again, not much incentive to spend money for a class.
For the record, I knew a student who took the test first without studying, took it again self-studying, and took it a third time after taking a prep course. She got the exact same score all three times.
"For example, the daughter of a friend worked as an English tutor between graduating from Brown and going to Harvard Law School and they made her sit for SAT. " OK, but did they require her to get a certain score?
Both my kids got NMSF qualifying PSAT scores without taking prep classes or using tutors. Yes, it is possible to pick up a book and prep. I don’t have much patience for the kids who post on here saying that they “can’t” do well on the SAT because their parents can’t pay for that stuff.
A lot of the “official” prep programs require the tutor to score in the 98th or 99th %ile on the exam, depending on the specific program. The cut-off for those %iles is high, but not sky-high.
We got $15 books from Amazon and had our kids go through those and take the practice tests in them. Worked excellent for them. They both have the self discipline to sit through a 3 hour practice test at home.
All this test prep nowadays just makes it an arms race that defeats the natural sorting that goes on. High scores still need to have a GPA and rigor that match.