Many private schools do prep work as part of the regular curriculum. Every high school math class through Precalc does prep work weekly and every 9-11 grade english class does prep work weekly. It is just part of school. Lots of kids do additional prep whether through the class offered after school or with private tutors. Kids range from middle class (teacher’s kids) to the kids of celebrities.
As far as who works at the prep companies, my son is a senior and went through the PSAT prep program at his school as well as the ACT prep program. He was hired by the company to be a mentor to the current batch of juniors starting the spring. He also worked for them this summer developing practice material (not by himself).
They hire kids with the right personality to be mentors. Test scores are important but not as important as being able to coach the kids. The summer job depended on high test scores.
Do prep classes tend to work with all students, or are there different ones aimed at students who want to avoid remedial classes and students who want significantly above-average scores? I feel like the latter would tend to be more expensive.
I taught MCAT/LSAT/GRE classes in the 90’s for a large national prep company. I had to take each and I believe 98th percentIle was the cutoff, although on the MCAT I taught all sections except OCHEM because I was nowhere near 98 on that.
The amount of prep. including zero prep. depends on the goal. If the goals are full tuition Merit and being accepted to an extremely selective program which might be at the college that is not selective in general, if these are the goals and if a kid has already HS GPA = 4.0 uw, I mean if the GPA is already at the highest possible level and will be accepted for the most Merit award considerations, why to leave the ACT / SAT for chances? I do not advocate taking the prep. class at all up, but why risk it all and not prepare yourself? It may take just few hours, 5 hours may be sufficient to warrant a score within requirement of the full tuition Merit and the program of your dream even if it has only 10 spots for the incoming freshmen. As I mentioned before, anybody who opens the ACT prep. book will realize very quickly that the test is based primarily on the middle school material that simply needs to be re-freshed.
I mentioned above a friend of QMP’s who scored 800/800/800 with no more preparation than subscribing to the free SAT Question of the Day service.
If a student needs prep, by all means, the student should do the preparation, but there are definitely students who can score 2350+ with almost no prep. They should not waste their time, and should not be pressed into spending a lot of time on prep courses by anxiety generated by others in their locale.
A student can tell pretty quickly from the books available from the College Board which group the student falls into. This is not really “leaving it to chance.” It’s just being smart about avoiding over-kill in terms of preparation.
I would guess that for a student who is capable of scoring 2350+ cold, the test prep courses might actually be counterproductive. No tricks or strategies are as good as just knowing or figuring out the answers, from reading the questions.
My D1 took a prep class right after sophomore year in high school for one of the tests (forgot if it was SAT or ACT). It did not help much. Then she did the practice test herself on both tests over the summer and got big improvement. She is now an upcoming junior in college and she is now an experienced private tutor for ACT/SAT and has several students every year. She said the prep class (with one of the major brand) she took is useless. Her students got pretty good improvement (one got ~5 point jump in ACT after 3 months). So for my D2, we skipped the prep class and just let her do practice tests.
To answer OP’s question, why don’t more middle class parents here at CC advocate test prep, I would argue it is because CC seems skewed heavily towards the exceptionally gifted students, who simply don’t need test prep. Read some of the “chance me” threads and it seems most of these kids are pretty terrific students.
I might also argue that CC is not necessarily the place to find “middle class” families, but few people in the upper third of income/assets want to accept they are not really middle class. Families who don’t qualify for financial aid, and who therefore would be seeking merit aid only, IMHO don’t fall in the middle class. But I understand that many of these families do consider themselves middle class as they might try to define the upper class as the top 5-10%.
The issue isn’t really that kids don’t take prep classes (some parents can’t afford them, some kids wouldn’t benefit because they score high without prep, etc.), but that they don’t even think about the test before their last chance to take it.
Most kids simply don’t think about it. In our area, most kids who do prep will consider that taking a practice test the weekend before is sufficient. One of my kid’s friends later commented that she wished her parents had made her study.
The problem with prep classes is that they are not designed to raise scores from the 90th to 98th+ percentile, which is the goal of many CC students and parents. They are designed to raise kids from the 50-60th to 80-90th percentile. The population of high performing students isn’t that large, and from what I have seen, they study independently or in small groups or hire a tutor.
Every kid in my son’s class who scored in the 34-36 range did not take a class but did lots of practice tests. They usually took the actual ACT test 2-3 times. I concur with @MiamiDAP , a lot of those kids just reviewed the math they took in 8th or 9th grade. A class is not going to help those kids raise their score from a 31 to a 35.
This is the case with all of the standardized tests - ACT, SAT, GRE, GMAT etc. The only firm that I have seen that specializes in the high end is Manhattan Prep, and they do mostly GMAT.
I do think prep can be a complete waste of time for some students. You could say that these students have been preparing throughout their normal schooling, and what they don’t need is extra prep–I believe that.
I think the “better safe than sorry” line of thinking promotes unnecessary expenditure and anxiety for families of these students. They should spend the money on books or interesting software or a trip.
There are places that promise to raise scores from 90th to 99th percentile. At these places if you are not scoring 800 on Math SAT they consider you a sick person in need of a cure. They do have a large number of real SAT tests. They either compiled a huge database of SAT questions or illegally obtained non-published tests (probably both). Every Saturday their students used to write a full test. Not sure how they operate now with the new SAT.
Way back when, my only preparation for the SAT was trying the practice questions in the booklet that contained the registration form, which functioned as familiarization with the test question formats. The math was algebra and geometry; the verbal then was based mainly on vocabulary (questions where you knew the words were easy; others were difficult). Those who wanted to prep the verbal studied lists of purported SAT words.
I think the OP is right, that good prep is worth the money for most students. We used Skype tutors for both of ours, and it did help them.
Many middle class parents do not know much about the college process. Also, in many areas people don’t discuss it much with each other, so the information tends to stay with a few people. The others don’t know what they don’t know.
Also, there is a lot of false information out there that above score X or Y, it does not matter.
I don’t think every student needs a prep course. I also think folks are too quick to attribute improvement in scores to prep. My DS18 improved ACT from 24 (7th grade Duke TIP) to 30 (freshman year) to 34 (sophomore year) without prep. The improvement happened because of his high school coursework. If he had taken a prep course, I might be operating under the mistaken assumption that the improvement was because of the prep I paid for. Obviously that wasn’t the case, because there was no prep. I am not saying it doesn’t help somebody. But for me, I would love for my son spend that time and effort on other pursuits that are more enjoyable. As much as possible I would prefer for him to remember HS and last years at home as something other than constant striving and worrying about tests. He is now done with ACT except for a final mandatory attempt for all juniors in the state, and doesn’t really care what he gets on it at this point.
PSAT is a different ballgame. Still, after talking to him about it, I am not inclined to make him endure something for it that wasn’t necessary for the ACT. He took it for practice as a sophomore and did well enough. If he scores the same or better he will be happy.
What my son found most helpful from his test prep classes was not the material , it was the test taking strategies and the practice that he got taking timed tests. I think part of the test prep class is overlooked when looking at the benefit of a class. It truly is a personal decision for each student. There is no right answer for every student.
I guess that one of the differences among school systems is the number of national standardized tests that the students take, in the course of their schooling. The earlier state-developed No Child Left Behind tests should be excluded from the count in general, because their quality has been highly dependent on the state examiners who design the tests–probably quite good in some states, not so good in others.
There are a bunch of national standardized tests that are available, though. During my schooling, we had about four standardized reading tests in first grade, a set of standardized tests across reading, vocabulary, math, and spelling in third grade, the same in sixth grade, something similar in eighth grade, with the addition of graph and chart reading, a set of state tests for high school freshmen, and then the old National Merit test taken as juniors in high school. QMP’s schedule was somewhat similar, with the addition of state tests plus the PSAT as a sophomore and as a junior.
If your local school district gives similar tests, it is worthwhile to look at which company is offering them. Some school boards pick tests so that all of their students are above average–if they can. The students are above average relative to that company’s test population, but that may not actually be nationally representative. If the company your school uses is the same as that used in Massachusetts and Connecticut, it is probably top of the line or near to it.