<p>Anyone see this article by Jennifer Moses in last weekend's WSJ?
Moses details the cost of the college application process for her twins: $125/weekly session for SAT vocab tutor (didn't say how many weeks), $693 for SAT tutor, $522 in SAT/ACT testing fees, $1,132 in college application fees including SAT/ACT score reports, $701 (so far) for her son's private college counselor, $4K in college visit travel expenses--in addition to 30K/year for one twin's private high school tuition (didn't say what the other twin's school costs)--All this because she can afford it (obviously) and not so much because she wants to, but because she is afraid that her kids could get bumped by another kid whose parents DID pay for all these extras.
Her conclusion is that the process is not only crazy, but gives an unfair advantage to those kids--her own included--who can and will pay for all of these extras.</p>
<p>OK, no real news there--but how realistic is this expense list, this feeling of competition?
If you don't have the money, do you feel your kid is at a disadvantage? For two kids I paid about $80 for test prep books, $150 in test fees, maybe $200 in application fees, less than 1K for travel expenses. No private HS tuition. No disadvantage, imo.</p>
<p>I think it’s very regionally driven. East Coast dwellers feel the pressure more because not only are the school ranked highly, they’re also local. </p>
<p>No private school costs for us. No test prep either; probably spent about $50 on test prep books that really didn’t get opened. No cost for ACT since it was paid for by the school; just the $15 for the PSAT and whatever the cost is for 1 SAT. Only 5 applications so less than $200 for that; think we only had to pay to send 2 sets of test scores since we sent the others when D took the test. Travel costs? Probably less than $500 including gas.</p>
<p>The numbers are kind of low if it´s for 2 kids, if you didn´t include private school tuition. Everyone pays for application and testing fees unless you could get it waived. Not everyone gets private college counselor, but if you do, $701 would only get you few hours, and most people pay for a pacakge rather than by the hour(that´s thousands, not hundreds). A lot of parents pay for essay writing camp or engage someone to help out with essays.</p>
<p>I really don’t understand the vocab and SAT tutor expenses. If your kid is a candidate for the extremely competitive colleges, he or she won’t need these things. The prep books will be enough, and then just for practice with timing and familiarizing them with the format–not to teach skills. Neither of my kids, nor their friends who were admitted to excellent schools, used these services. There’s not much a “vocab tutor” can offer a student that they can’t get themselves with some dedicated self-study, even if it were needed.</p>
<p>For two children I’ve paid $150 in application fees, $200 in test prep books/supplies, $224 in test fees and approximately $100 travel.</p>
<p>Were my kids at a disadvantage? Absolutely.</p>
<p>No workshops, no special coaches, no test prep course. In my area there are families who spend more than I make in a year on prepping their kids for the SAT/ACT. </p>
<p>I am fortunate that our state school has great programs my kids wanted to be a part of and through their own hard work they raised their test scores to a level that gave them good scholarship opportunities. So we have no regrets at our house - but if they’d wanted different things, there would most definitely have been lost opportunities for living with a modest income.</p>
<p>My child had no tutoring-the public high school provided an SAT prep course for free which she took for a grade. I paid for apps (11 of them, but a significant number waived the fees) and travel to some colleges, which mostly amounted to wear and tear on the car and gas.</p>
<p>Still I think D did pretty well. Now college itself really is costing me an arm and a leg.</p>
<p>Moonchild - I’ve seen kids with high scores who “did it themselves” resort to professional test prep for a last effort to raise their score to the level that had eluded them for months and it did pay off. So while I agree that kids may be able to do it all on their own, there is a benefit that economic resources can tap into. There is a disadvantage if you’re in an area where others can afford the frills and you can’t because you are, in part, being judged against your peers.</p>
<p>Nobody will ever know how much Johnny spent on test prep, vocab coach etc. Many won’t even think that Johnny had a vocab coach, private consultant etc. Colleges reviewing Johnny’s application will see how his scores, grades, essays, etc. compare to his peer group, not his economic peer group necessarily, but the kids he goes to school with.</p>
<p>No one can expect everything to be fair and equal across the board but money is making the playing field more and more unequal in college admissions. Particularly where test scores are involved.</p>
<p>I am not at all convinced that money spent on SAT prep = higher scores. I have seen way too many kids pour money into prep courses and come out with very little increase in their score. Also, I have seen many students set up a practice schedule and run through practice tests in their bedrooms weekend after weekend and then smoke the test. It is more focus and discipline than cash.</p>
<p>We spent a lot on college visits. Probably about $7,500 total. But D ended up at a college she adores with a total of $60,000 in merit money over the four years. It was a good invesment for us, I don’t think she would have gotten the same happy experience with good merit money close to home. Just bought prep books for SAT (I was her math SAT tutor… believe me, a group class would have been a waste of money). Her vocab coach? Weekly trips to the library for the first 18 years of her life :)</p>
<p>" Her vocab coach? Weekly trips to the library for the first 18 years of her life"</p>
<p>And to me, this is the way it should be. That is exactly what the SAT was meant to do. Not measure the dollars spent on gaming the test. I believe we will see this test fall away sooner than later. It has become much more of a game than a measure of apitude.</p>
<p>Glido - in many cases I would agree with you, which is why (along with being broke) my kids were do it yourselfers. However - high powered test prep has come to my town - and I’m not talking about some group session with K or PR - I’m talking one-on-one test prep with people who are highly educated, credentialed and able to charge $200 an hour in some cases because they are getting results. People don’t advertise when they take their kids preparation to this level - but if it’s a full time income for these individuals it tells you that someone is paying them (those million dollar homes don’t pay for themselves). Below that level of investment, there are people in town charging several thousand who have raised kids scores AFTER the kid spent a year prepping on their own - and I’m not talking about run of the mill prepping on their own, I’m talking Tiger Mom level of dedication to prepping on their own, followed by short term work with an individual who did in fact get the kid the extra points needed that were always just out of reach.</p>
<p>My kids are happy - their kids are happy - but dollars can and do make a difference.</p>
<p>Wow -if my kids had had to do all that to get their 750 - 800 scores, they would not have bothered; they are just lazy about that sort of thing, and I’m not really skilled at doing the “tiger mom” thing.</p>
<p>bchan–if you don’t mind saying, at least in general (state, region, metro)-- where are you? And what type of score improvements have you seen with high powered one-on one tutoring–what scores were the students trying to reach?</p>
<p>I’m really curious about this, because I would tend to agree that you can’t buy scores. A kid has to have the smarts to begin with. Yes, you can improve scores through practice, (and smart/motivated people will practice a lot, but that is not “gaming” the test, imo). What “secrets” do tutors have that aren’t in the books? (Please tell me so I can start charging $200/hr!)</p>
<p>We paid for a few test prep books and the test fees and score report fees. D1 did minimal test prep on her own and did just fine, getting into her first choice school ED, which saved us a bundle on college application fees because most of the other applications were never submitted. </p>
<p>Frankly I think the whole commercial test prep/tutoring thing is a racket. I haven’t seen any convincing evidence that it helps; or at any rate that it helps more than a little disciplined self-prep would help.</p>
<p>All this money just to score high on the SAT/ACT? That’s rather ironic since even a perfect score is not nearly enough to get one’s kid into HYPSM these days. Look at the stats on CC of the students who got deferred from Yale and MIT during the early-decision round this year – more than a few had perfect or near-perfect test scores and top class ranks to boot.</p>
<p>My son goes to a public high school. He got a 36.0 ACT on his first try, as well as a 240 on his PSAT. He’s ranked first in a class of 400 students. Yet he faces an uphill battle on the EC front because no one in his school knew about national competitions in math and the sciences – we found out too late to get him involved. It’s easy to do well by oneself on a relatively simply test like the SAT/ACT; it’s tough or impossible to get a chance to compete on a national stage without advanced knowledge of one’s participation options and access to the coaches needed to make one truly competitive.</p>
<p>The REAL arms race these days is in extracurriculars, not test scores.</p>
<p>I agree that the perceived need to spend money on admissions preparation varies by region. Statistically, NJ, NY, and CT students will have a tougher time getting into the Ivies than a kid from Idaho. Also, in general, the NE is very competitive as far as the rush to achievement, so the cohort will be more accomplished. My friends in other states think their kids are top notch with 3 AP classes. The brightest students in our high school will graduate with 10-15. As for the admissions coach, son’s GF used one and achieved the same results he did with a slightly worse transcript.</p>
<p>But no matter what the local scene is, a truly smart kid can manage just fine with nothing extra that mom and dad have to pay for. My kids did. Both took the community education SAT math prep course which was 7 weeks long, and cost around $150. That was it as far as test prep or tutoring. I didn’t keep track of college visit expenses, but they didn’t fly anywhere on my dime. S flew for a scholarship weekend, but that was paid for by the school. For S we spent about $500 on application fees and score reports. For D, less since she applied to fewer schools.</p>
<p>Where I think our limited financial resources cost us most, was in the inability to pay for summer enrichment classes to enable the kids to advance more quickly or to ensure good grades when they retook the same class at the high school. Summer classes was the way many of their peers ended up in advanced math. We also couldn’t afford the preventative and perpetual tutoring to help our children achieve top grades and to compensate for inadequate instruction, especially in the math and science classes. Since through natural intelligence and elbow grease, my children were able to gain placement in the same classes as kids who got there through tutoring and summer courses, I’m confident that some extra help would have put them above most of those kids as far as GPA. But they took a grade hit when they had poor math and science teachers. Their peers were getting weekly tutoring to help them.</p>