Xiggi's SAT prep advice

Godot · May 26, 2005, 11:55pm

Sorry, I accidentally pressed Submit on the last post. Here is the complete post:

Xiggi invited me to contribute to this thread. In case you have not read my previous posts, I am a professional tutor (with my own small tutoring company) who does preparation for a number of standardized exams, among which is the SAT. I have previously taught for Kaplan and The Princeton Review before setting out on my own path, so I do have some insider insights into their workings.

I am a little tired right now, so this will be a brief post. I will probably write more after I get some more sleep. :)

First of all, most of what Xiggi recommends is solid. Taking tests untimed and analyzing each and every question and answer can definitely add to your score. My students follow a similar model in working with me and my staff of tutors.

I would agree that taking a Kaplan or Princeton Review course is probably a waste of your money. Again, I used to teach for those companies, and the quality of the instructors was quite inconsistent. There were definitely a handful of good teachers who knew their material, but there was just as many or more teachers who could barely score a 1300 on the SAT themselves, were poorly trained (Kaplan would slap new teachers with a bunch of books and advise them to perhaps stop by a class or two to observe), or would merely read from a script (Kaplan teachers are famously known as "robots"). I only know of the results from the local centers, but I imagine other centers are not much different. It's not uncommon for their students to merely improve by 20 or 50 points or even drop from their initial scores. (I heard of one girl who "progressed" from a 1320 on the PSAT to a 1300 on the SAT after a Kaplan course.) Faced with only these options, most students would probably benefit more from a structured self-study program, assuming they are motivated enough.

There are other alternatives, of course, among which is working with a private tutor. Even this path can be laden with dangers, however. MOST private tutors are just as incompetent as Kaplan and Princeton Review teachers. I heard of one woman who was known to give her students "specially-made" QC questions with 5 or 6 choices! And another lady who would talk on the phone for a good half an hour at a time while she had two students working simultaneously on some problems in the kitchen. Make sure you acquire a tutor with solid credentials, who has scored a 1500+ on the SAT himself or herself, and has a track record of good improvements with students. Almost all of the SAT tutors I have hired have scored at least a 1500 on their own SAT. My new batch of tutors are currently undergoing a 50- to 60-hour training program to ensure that they understand the exam inside and out and know every nuance of how to achieve the maximum score improvement from every student. Additionally, they will be required to score at least a 2320 or so on a mock new SAT (they are a little scared right now, but I am very confident that every person will pass). I only select the best and I train them thoroughly (even my veteran tutors are continually monitored and re-trained to ensure that they are delivering uniformly excellent results), and you should make sure your local tutoring company does the same.

Xiggi is right-on in saying that the mere use of strategies and "tricks" will probaby not earn you a top score on the SAT. My courses aim to provide the students with a comprehensive set of tools -- this means all the content, formulas, strategies, techniques, practice, etc., necessary for them to achieve the optimal results. I do not merely rely on a few tricks or strategies, but that is not to say that I do not use them at all. Some of the strategies can, in fact, be quite handy on some of the tougher questions that students cannot solve directly or completely. (If they can solve the questions directly and efficiently, they are often advised to do so.) As a habit, I make sure to review every possible method of attack (whether it's the "direct" approach, plugging in numbers, working backwards, estimating, etc.) on almost every math question; it is the student's job to select the method that works best on that question. My intent is to help the students squeeze every possible point from the exam. Sometimes, this means using a strategy or "trick" to solve, or at least get close to the correct answer on, a question that the student would otherwise skip or miss.

To close off this post, here is a brief and rough model of what I do with my own students in a typical SAT course:

<ol>
<li>The student takes a diagnostic exam before the first session to set a benchmark and diagnose strengths and weaknesses. The tutor and student set a final score goal at the first session.</li>
<li>I introduce all of the content and strategies in the first few sessions. The New SAT has more sections, so this takes longer than it used to (maybe 14 to 16 tutoring hours).</li>
<li>The student is given practice from various books, including Barron's, assorted workbooks, and the Official SAT Study Guide, of course. He or she is asked to review at least all the missed questions, omitted questions, and questions that were answered correctly despite guessing or a plain wrong method. I would compel them to analyze EVERY question, but this may not be the most efficient approach, and they would probably plot to kill me because I'm adding to their already heavy assignment load. :O</li>
<li>Throughout the course, the student takes between 4 and 5 diagnostic exams from the Official SAT Study Guide to monitor his progress. These are thoroughly reviewed in the same fashion.</li>
<li>The student brings any questions about the reading, practice questions, or diagnostic exams to the next session. These are analyzed thoroughly until the student is satisfied and understands completely.</li>
<li>With the remaining time in the session, we introduce more content and strategies, if necessary, and/or work questions, either together with the students or as independent drills. At the end of the session, I assign homework, sometimes in the form of short drills, sometimes entire sections, reading assignments, review of content (such as math facts and formulas), and, of course, often another diagnostic exam. It is not unusual for a student to be assigned 6 to 8 hours of homework a week. Intermediate score and other goals are set for the next couple of sessions.</li>
</ol>

Using this model, I have been routinely helping students improve by 300 to 500 points on the new SAT. For some reason, I'm finding it even easier than before to achieve large score increases with students on the new exam (although I still got very good results with the old exam). I'm not sure whether it's because the new exam is more coachable, or I am getting better (I certainly hope so), or a combination of the two. :) Let me stress that GOOD tutoring can be beneficial for almost all students, from those scoring below 1200 to those scoring a 2200+. In fact, I have a special advanced SAT course for high-scoring students (those who start with a 1900 or higher) that guarantees roughly a 150- to 200-point increase (it depends on the starting score, of course).

I believe many students can improve by 100 to 200 points on the new SAT on their own through the right form of self-study. For a larger improvement, however, an experienced, expert professional tutor (again, there are many bad ones out there!) can push you past that plateau. The caveat is that most mediocre tutors will probably not get you more than a 200-point improvement, which you can perhaps achieve on your own. (Note that I'm not trying to advertise here; I doubt there are any students here from Buffalo anyways!)

All right, it's time to rest. I hope this has been insightful. Let me know if you find this useful or have any questions or comments, and I'll try to write more when I get more time. :)

shojomo · May 27, 2005, 12:12am

Very helpful, thank you.

tanman · May 27, 2005, 1:17am

Thanks as always to Xiggi, PeteSAT, Godot and everyone else who has posted their professional or personal opinions

xiggi · May 27, 2005, 2:23am

Since I am not a professional tutor -and not even an amateur tutor- I do not keep track of score improvements. You may have noticed that I do not even recommend a diagnostic test before starting the preparation. The reality is that most people I start talking to have taken a few tests and have earned some type of diagnostic score. In a way, I believe that students can self-diagnose their weaknesses after going through the starting phases. I plan to add a few posts tomorrow that will discuss how one progresses in his or her preparation.

However, I want to add something regarding scores. In the past years, I have helped a good number of people and they came to me from very different parts of the world and very different scores. I have helped people asking to boost a score of 850 with a 350 verbal, many 1100-1300 scorers, as well as helped others "grab" the last 60-100 points that separated them from a perfect score. In my neck of the woods, I have had dozens increases of 300 points, a fact made easier by living in an area that is predominantly represented by URM with a SAT average well below 1000.

Unlike the professional tutors, I cannot take credit for those results. I always felt that the credit belonged to the students. I do, however, want to make sure readers know that many people have increased their scores substantially by following the simple steps I have now started to outline. I also want to make sure that readers know that the only limitation that exists is the number 800. People who self-prepare do not necessarily reach an illusory plateau that requires the help of a professional to overcome. Actually, at the highest level, all improvements have to come from the student as the tutoring help reaches its own limit. Lance Armstrong has the best team and best supporting staff, but for the last miles of the Galibier or Mt Ventoux, he is the one who has to pedal his way up while the technical director sits in his car. While I do not keep track of statistics, I have been overjoyed by reading a lot of thank you emails confirming acceptances at dream schools during the past two admissions' seasons.

Godot · May 27, 2005, 3:18am

Xiggi,

I appreciate your opinions on score improvements. Tutoring, or teaching, for that matter, in the purest form is simply enabling the student to help or teach himself. My students do the work; I simply push or guide them along. So, yes, of course, in principle, any student would be able to improve his or her score dramatically. Unfortunately, as is often the case, there is a difference between what is true in theory and what is true in practice. Practically, many students do not improve significantly (where I define "significant" as more than 100 to 200 points of improvement) on their own, and can benefit from expert, professional help, if not to achieve a bigger improvement than they can manage on their own, then to achieve that same improvement in a much shorter amount of time. The number I quoted, what you termed as "an illusory plateau," is not very scientific, but it's my best guess based on what I've heard from students I have worked with and other accounts.

Think of professional help in many other areas. One can, in theory, for example, teach himself how to play the piano. Would he progress much faster and become more polished by working frequently with a world-class pianist? Probably. Or consider professional sports coaches. They abound for a reason. Even Tiger Woods uses a coach. As far as self-diagnosis: while it's true that many students can detect to a certain extent their own error patterns on the SAT, an expert can probably describe them more accurately and precisely and diagnose them more effectively. Would you try to diagnose your own illness, or would a doctor be far more effective at doing it?

To become excellent in almost any area of life, and to do so efficiently, requires seeking out experts, people who have already done and excel at what you hope to become proficient in. Professional SAT tutors are no different from people who offer their expertise and experience in other areas (for which they charge exorbitant fees). I understand that services like tutoring can be expensive for many families, but if it's something you can afford, and, again, if it's expert help, I don't think it really hurts. To reiterate, there are many incompetent tutors out there, so if you have no real options in your area, self-study may be the best bet for you.

I think you would agree with me that most, if not all, of the students on CC are bright and motivated. I think you'll also agree that we see a post almost every day from a student or two seeking help or advice with the exam (or at least one section) because he or she is "stuck." Many of these students, no doubt, have taken exams and analyzed them on their own. Some may have even followed the "Xiggi method," or something very similar. Yet, there are still students who can reach a "plateau." Outside professional help is not necessarily base or deleterious. It's a business, like any other, but it's also a business that achieves results (again, I'm only considering the reputable, competent people). The SAT average would be far higher if every student were able to improve significantly on his or her own.

BTW, I would love to hear from any students who have improved by more than 300 points combined (or more than 200 points on the old SAT scale) from a previous official SAT (or PSAT) to a subsequent official SAT purely through self-study. Any of you??

xitammarg · May 27, 2005, 9:13am

I've been following Xiggi's posts as well, and I'd also like to chime in.

Here's my background. I started out teaching the SAT and PSAT for Kaplan in college; I stopped pretty quickly as I discovered that I didn't agree with their methods. I've since written an SAT guide (for sale on the internet) that has been through a few versions in the last couple of years. I also have guides for the GRE and LSAT, and I'm working on guides for the GMAT and MAT. I occasionally teach one-day classes in my approach to the SAT, and I used to tutor students one-on-one in my approach. I don't really have time to train people live any more, so I don't teach or tutor in person as much as I used to. I do still tutor my online customers through email and instant messaging, though, so I'm still very in touch with the needs of high school students as they prepare for the SAT.

As I've noted in the other forums, my purpose is not to push my product here. But since we're having a discussion about the best way to approach preparation, and Xiggi asked for input from professionals, here I am.

Like Pete and Godot, I agree in large part with what Xiggi has written so far. His approach is simple and makes sense, and the underlying philosophy works in any situation where you have to prepare for something: you make the preparation as much like the real event as you can, introducing variations that will help you emphasize different skills you'll need (ie, taking tests open book versus closed, un-timed versus timed, et cetera). Then you just keep practicing, reviewing your mistakes, and refining things. You consider advice from those who have gone before you, accepting what works and rejecting what fails. If you do this, you really can't fail unless you give up. As I said, this approach works in preparation for anything--or, at least, it's worked for everything I've ever prepared before.

I do disagree with Pete and Godot on other points, most of which are minor, but as I've noted elsewhere, if another approach gets good results then I'm very hesitant to say it's "wrong;" I'd rather just illuminate the differences. I'll outline a couple of them now.

<ol>
<li> Why Kaplan is bad</li>
</ol>

I think most people who have worked with Kaplan and its ilk will agree with what Pete and Godot have said so far, which is that you could very well be wasting your money if you go with them. But Pete and Godot both seem to say (forgive me if I'm misreading) that the main problem with PR or K is that the quality of teaching varies widely from center to center. To me, that's only part of the problem; the much larger problem for me is that Kaplan's approach is fundamentally different from the approach that I used (unwittingly) in high school, and that almost every high-scorer I know has followed. So even if you had a great teacher who taught exactly what Kaplan prescribed, I think you'd still be at a disadvantage.

I don't want to get into too many specifics, but, among other things, when I taught for Kaplan I had to teach people the Kaplan guessing strategy, the Kaplan philosophy on order of difficulty, et cetera. These things were, as I said, totally at odds with how I had actually taken the test when I was in high school. I pointed this out to the manager of the center I worked at while I was still in training--I was ridiculously naive then, and thought he'd be able to do something about it--and he told me to get over it and stick to the K manual. I tried but couldn't, and ultimately I decided to stop working there.

One experience I had while teaching a PSAT class is instructive. In the class was a student who was re-taking the class because his first attempt hadn't been successful (which should tell you something); he had recently moved from somewhere else (can't remember where) and had taken the other class in his former hometown. We were working on identifying sentence errors. I was getting completely frustrated by the Kaplan explanation for a particular question--they explained the error, but they were leaving out that this type of error occurred with startling regularity. So I jumped "off-book" for a minute and explained that this sort of mistake occurred many times throughout the test, and showed them how to recognize it. The student who was taking the class for the second time looked up from his book and, totally interrupting me, said something like, "That's the first useful thing I've ever learned from Kaplan that I didn't already know." The other students seemed to be mostly in agreement with him. That was the last class I taught for Kaplan.

<ol>
<li> The idea of score-range-specific advice</li>
</ol>

One criticism that I often hear about my advice is similar to what was said about Xiggi's method--that it probably only works well for students in the low-to-average score ranges, and it probably isn't enough to close the gap to a perfect 800 in a section.

I can counter that assertion in two ways. The first is by providing plenty of examples of student improvement that has ranged all over the place. Like Xiggi, I've used my approach to help people from every scoring range. I get emails from students crediting my approach with helping them finally get above 1500 (on the old 1600 test) and finally helping them get over 1000 (again, on the old test). My younger brother used my advice to get a perfect SAT score; one of his friends took the same one-day class and went from an 1190 to a 1460.

But the second way to counter it is much stronger: SAT advice should empower the student to answer every single question that can appear on a real SAT, as simply and easily as possible. If an approach does this, then it can be useful and meaningful to anyone without a perfect score. The reason is simple--if you're not getting a perfect score, then there are flaws in your approach, and the closer you can come to an approach that correctly answers every SAT question, the higher your score will go. A complete approach doesn't need to be altered to suit an individual student. (I'm NOT saying that every student should be taught the same way--I'm saying that the fundamental approach can always be the same, though there are as many ways of leading a student to that fundamental approach as there are students.)

I think part of the reason that the Xiggi method and my method might not seem to be aimed at the higher-end student is that they are relatively simple. But, to paraphrase Bruce Lee, mastery of a subject runs to simplicity. The simplicity of an approach does not necessarily mean it's flawed.

<ol>
<li> Vocabulary</li>
</ol>

This is a big point of contention between me and most of the rest of the world, and I know that. But I still believe that pointed memorization of vocabulary for the SAT is, in many instances, a waste of a student's time and a source of more frustration than assistance. Please allow me to explain why.

First, I'm absolutely not saying that having a good vocabulary is something to be avoided. Every word you can learn to use properly is helpful, of course.

I'm only saying that, for SAT-purposes, trying to add words to a student's vocabulary with the expectations that (1)the student will remember them correctly, (2)the words will appear on the test when the student takes it, and (3)the student will be able to answer a question by resorting to the memorized definition is, in my experience, futile.

Here's why I think that:

First, my undergraduate degree was in Linguistics, and one of the things I was always interested in was vocabulary acquisition. No study has ever been done that suggests that deliberately memorizing advanced vocabulary words in a person's native language has any benefit. Further, anecdotal evidence suggests that this sort of approach to vocabulary only leads to misuse of the target words, if anything--witness the TV preacher who boasts of his "photogenic memory," or the Kaplan advice I read once about tackling " the most arduous vocabulary." (The preacher meant to say he had a photographic memory. Kaplan was correctly using the most basic meaning of the word "arduous," which is "hard," but few competent native speakers who know the word would pair it with "vocabulary;" "arduous" belongs with words like "task," "undertaking," "day," et cetera--more abstract words that seem to denote a thing with a beginning and an ending. Using "arduous" to describe a set of data, like a vocabulary, rings false to people who are familiar with the word.)

The best way to learn a word is, of course, to acquire it unintentionally. Ideally, students would use words like "indefatigable" (which, come to think of it, I don't ever remember seeing on the SAT, but you get the point) as readily as they used words like "chair." The most effective way to make this happen is to read constantly from high-quality sources, but I haven't found that most students can make significant changes this way in a period of months. A student who has been reading forever can acquire new vocabulary after seeing it only once in an article, because that part of her mind is very active and robust; a student who has read nothing but comic books and teen magazines from the time she was 9 will not have the same propensity, at least not as quickly.

xitammarg · May 27, 2005, 9:18am

Plus, as I'll discuss below, there are easier ways (in my opinion) to get around the SAT.

Another big-test-company anecdote: The assistant professor who taught my intro survey course in Linguistics told us that she used to teach for PR, and a student came to her and asked how he could improve his vocabulary in time for the SAT. She told him, in a moment of poor judgment, to go back in time to when he was four and start reading every day. She says PR let her go after this, which she regretted, but she still stood by the advice.

Before I get off this sub-topic, I want to point out that I think one hidden reason that some students might be scoring lower on the essays than they expected to is that their vocabularies aren't as good as they thought they were. Knowing, for example, that "arduous" roughly means "hard" might (I emphasize might) be enough to squeeze out an SC answer, but writing something like "I struggled over the arduous question" in an essay might (again, might) betray a lacking knowledge of proper English usage and result in a lower score.

The second problem with memorizing vocab is, as Pete and Xiggi both noted, that it's a very hit-or-miss proposition. If you don't know the words that appear on the test, then it's unlikely to matter what other words you do know, which means that the time you spent on memorizing vocab might have been used inefficiently. And that leads me to the third reason I don't like memorizing vocabulary . . .

No matter how much vocab you memorize, there will probably still be times when you come to a question and don't know one or two key words. When this happens, you need a backup strategy to attack the question. I give my students several backup strategies that can be combined to attack SC questions with unknown words, and tell them that spending time mastering these strategies is more efficient than memorizing vocabulary--if you'll need these strategies in any event, why not just get very good at them and then apply them whenever you don't know words? At least, that's my approach.

I should add that I never studied vocabulary to take the SAT or any other test, with the exception of vocabulary tests in language classes. I've never spent a minute teaching an SAT student vocabulary. I have received many emails from students saying that after reading my guide for the old SAT they were eventually able to answer almost all SAT analogies correctly without studying vocabulary, even when they didn't know what the words meant. I should also add that, in many cases, I have been wrong about what words mean on the SAT but still been able to answer questions featuring those words correctly.

And again, I'm not suggesting that a good vocabulary is a bad thing. It's a very good thing. But I don't think it plays as big a role in your SAT score as some seem to believe.

Of course, I recognize that Pete and Godot and many others run successful businesses teaching their students vocabulary to some degree. So there must be something to that approach too--I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying that I prefer another approach.

<ol>
<li> Length of preparation time</li>
</ol>

This is another area where I seem to disagree with Godot, Pete, and, to a lesser extent Xiggi. I don't think that very long or intensive preparation is always necessary or desirable, though I'm certainly not suggesting that it's NEVER called for. I think each student is in a unique situation with respect to the amount of time necessary for SAT preparation. I have known students who had to work fairly hard before things started "clicking" for them, and I've known two students who went up 120 points (old test) after sitting with me for an hour. Certainly a student should keep working until he's consistently getting the score he wants, but I don't think this necessarily has to translate to hours spent every night or every week on the SAT.

My own class is only 9 hours long, which sounds very short to a lot of people. I follow this class up with individual support afterwards, but most students don't ever get in touch with me after the class and still do well. The class is so short because my approach to the SAT is relatively simple. For example, I can usually teach students to answer CR questions in about half an hour; my general approach to math question can be taught in about an hour and a half. Of course, student questions and examples take up additional time, and no two classes are ever the same, but when an approach is relatively simple it doesn't take much time to teach it. Xiggi's approach, too, has been largely articulated in this thread, and certainly wouldn't take more than an hour to learn. (I'm talking about the approach to preparation itself; the actual preparation with the Xiggi method would take considerably longer, considering that each timed sample test will be more than one hour in duration.)

I teach the class in such a compressed time for a variety of reasons. One is that competitive high school students these days have pretty much zero free time, and it's usually easier for my students to clear off one Saturday than it is to show up a few hours a night for a few nights a week for a few weeks. Another reason is that I find one mega-dose of SAT prep often proves beneficial--it seems that, because they focus on the test for an entire day and go over it so thoroughly, when the day is finished they feel like they're "over it."

In my mind, successful SAT prep is more about figuring out the rules and patterns that inform the test's design; once you have a handle on these, the test becomes immeasurably easier. This goes for all standardized tests I've ever seen, by the way, though many (for graduate-level work or professional certification) also involve large amounts of material that has to be mastered as well. Some students figure out how to exploit the test's design on their own, some get it pretty quickly once you show them a few examples, and some need to work at it for a while before it become second-nature. For this reason, I don't feel that a longer course format is necessary, though, again, that's the model espoused by most test prep companies with apparent success, so I won't say that it's a "wrong" approach.

<ol>
<li> Self-studying versus professional help</li>
</ol>

This is a place where I agree wholeheartedly with Xiggi--in my opinion, self-studying can absolutely help any dedicated and motivated student get any score she wants. (By "self-studying" I mean following the Xiggi method as closely as possible.)

I disagree that qualified expert or professional help is always needed or, indeed, helpful. To respond to some of Godot's points, while expert/professional help can often be helpful, some levels of performance require this help and some do not. If Tiger Woods were only trying to golf well enough to ace a standardized golfing test, I doubt he'd need a coach; he needs a coach, in my opinion, because he's trying to be the best golfer ever (or he was, at any rate), and he needs an external motivator to keep pushing him to improve himself. In addition, some pieces of advice may be popular while still being useless. I would never take the average doctor's advice on my diet; the standard advice you'd get these days is, if not demonstrably wrong, at least wholly at odds with the type of eating that has kept human beings alive and dominant for millennia, as well as with the diets of most athletes and centenarians. Of course, if I thought I might have appendicitis, I'd go to a doctor right away, because I do believe that any doctor knows a lot more about removing my appendix than I could ever teach myself in time. These are silly examples, but my point is simply this: professional advice may or may not be useful. Like Feynman said, the value of advice lies in its truth and applicability, not in its source. Being an expert or professional really only means that people pay you for your opinion; professionals are proven wrong just as often as everybody else is.

Now, of course, some students need to have a person stand over them and make them take a practice test, or need to be reminded to study every day at 5pm. Professional assistance might be called for in these cases, but that still doesn't change my conviction that a motivated student doesn't necessarily need any professional assistance.

This, of course, begs the question of why I would set myself up as a professional. The answer is simply that my SAT advice consists of the sort of patterns and rules of the test's design that I uncovered through my own "self-study" and analysis of the test. By using my materials, a student can save herself the time and trouble of figuring those things out by herself. This doesn't mean, of course, that, given enough time, she couldn't come to these observations on her own. She could. But I can probably save her a decent amount of time--or, at any rate, that's the goal.

xitammarg · May 27, 2005, 9:20am

Further, I certainly never studied to get my original SAT scores in high school; as noted in the SAT/ACT forum, some students who scored 2250+ at one poster's school never prepared at all. I know for a fact that if I had followed the professional advice that was popular at the time (that I should guess when I wasn't sure, look for early questions to be easier than later questions, cram vocabulary, et cetera), I wouldn't have my own test-prep company right now. All I'd have is a high-mediocre SAT score and a lot of debt from the merit-based scholarship to a state school that I wouldn't have gotten.

Again, this is not to say that professional advice is never warranted--it is certainly warranted in many situations, SAT-related and otherwise. I just disagree that professional help, even from the most qualified and well-respected professionals, is always good advice. In many cases it is just plain bad advice--professional advice has given us a lot, but it's also given us things like alchemy, which is regarded by most modern people as a huge waste of time and effort.

Also, I have several emails from students who made significant increases through "self study" (by which I mean combining the approach from my Guide with their own observations and/or other approaches and working on their own without a class or tutor). It it not only possible, but common, for self-studiers to do well.

Okay, I apologize for the long and rambling nature of this post. But that's pretty much where I stand on most of what's been said here so far. Bottom line: Xiggi's method is pretty solid, and I'd recommend it to anybody dedicated enough to handle it (or anybody whose parents will find the necessary dedication for them :) ).

shojomo · May 27, 2005, 10:29am

Another great post and extremely helpful for parents like me who have students planning to spend the summer working on SAT/ACT prep. I hope you'll continue to weigh in on these issues as the thread (hopefully) continues.

xiggi · May 27, 2005, 11:36am

Godot, please try to understand where we disagree and where we agree.

This is not an issue between good self-preparation and good tutoring. It is an issue between bad and inefficient self-preparing and poor tutoring. Please remember that I posted my opinion about the resources that are available to families starting the process of applying to college. In front of them, they see a sea of options, ranging from shelves full of books to a good number of prep companies or independent tutors. There is also a good amount of unsolicited help since alsmost everyone has a good opinion to share.

I've tried to put myself in the shoes of many. How would I approach this process is my motto for this exercise. For the past two years, I have read and posted thousand of posts with the majority in the SAT forum. I have read many accounts of students who had poor experiences at the prep companies -the ones we agree are bad. I have read many accounts of students going in circles in their preparation. As I said earlier, many students spend much time desperately seeking for the Holy Grail, a superfast and magical solution that would propel them to a great score ... with little effort. Those are the students who look at the fat prep books and read a few pages before jumping into testing. or falling asleep. They may even take the entire 8 or 10 tests and improve very little. That does not amount to an adequate preparation. There has to be some method to the madness.

The largest part of my recommendation entails working through as many tests as possible while constantly seeking to improve the speed and accuracy of the answers. To accomplish this, I do recommend outside sources. I do recommend to seek them in as many books and guides as possible, and then use the strategies to match their own aptitude and personality. I am quite certain that this is the method used by ... most great tutors. It seems that the only difference we have is that you may believe that students are incapable of making the right decision on their own. You may be correct when it comes to students who do not consider the preparation important or necessary. However, when it comes to students who ARE intent to find the best way to improve, the story is different. If you had been around during the summer of 2003 and 2004, you might have seen the dynamic exchange of questions and responses on the SAT forum. Students were posting their questions, and others were providing answers ... and methods. The nicest part was that students who started asking questions soon offered answers to "newbies". I can assure you that no SAT question ever remained unanswered correctly. Finding the best sources for GOOD answers is a key part of an efficient self-preparation.

In my earlier post, I recognized that there are times when professional help is beneficial and warranted. I also recognized that there are many tutors -individual or from companies- who are wonderful. I believe that it should be obvious to everyone that the people I invited to post in this thread fall in the category of good tutors. In reaching this judgment, your word is sufficient to me. I trust that the improvement you mention are real and true.

In some way, I also expect you to take me at my word. If I say that I helped many people ... you should trust me. I could document it quite easily, but what would be the point?

Please judge me by the validity of the information I have posted, and try to understand that I have no reason to inflate the results I mentioned. Actually, I only discussed scores to address your conclusion about self-preparation. People who know my history on CC know that I never discuss students' scores or statistics publicly.

Scores do not not measure me, nor define me. I think that my words do it better.

risingstars-markg · May 27, 2005, 5:37pm

I wholly endorse the Xiggi method. I have credentials here -- I've taught SAT prep to over 2000 students. Their reported improvements last year averaged 126.7 points.

We use exclusively College Board materials for practice tests. They were abundant until the March SAT came along, but the four available tests in the current format are adequate to give students a sense of the range of questions, the timing they need, and the subjects for extra study.

Xiggi is right that you want to do more than just take the tests score them and be done. Pore over them when you are done to know your weaknesses. Then either via a book, a teacher, or a private SAT tutor, learn the skills to shore them up.

I'm biased towards having an SAT tutor because for the ambitious student who will put the time into taking and dissecting College Board tests, having the tutor to then help is more EFFICIENT than struggling with your own way to get that kind of question right in the future.

I'm sensitive that tutoring costs a lot. The way to minimize those costs is by being a MATURE STUDENT. Do your own corrections, find the dumb mistakes, then present to the tutor just the answers that were troublesome. Include those you got right but weren't sure of.

A book called "Perfect Score 1600" gives characteristics of the students who landed 1600 scores on the Old SAT. There was only ONE common characteristic -- nearly 70% said they took a lot of practice SATs.

For students starting with far from a perfect score, I have to add this to the Xiggi advice: devour vocbulary words. Though analogies have been removed from the SAT, the sentence completions and Reading Comp answer choices are punitive if not armed with a good vocabulary.

Mark Greenstein

Godot · May 27, 2005, 8:25pm

Xiggi and xitammarg,

First of all, let me say that I respect both of you and your views and opinions. Xiggi, I don't doubt your numbers, and I appreciate that you do not question mine. Again, the supposed differences in opinion that we have may not really be differences. We actually may agree on more than you think.

I will go as far as to say that the MAJORITY of tutors and test prep companies out there don't really know what they are doing and can't really help students prepare for the SAT adequately. Mike, I actually concur that the Kaplan method is not necessarily the best approach. This was not mentioned in my previous post, but even their best teachers cannot produce the best results with a flawed course and method. I looked at their course books recently -- and laughed. The methods are quite basic, and there is not enough depth in the material for the above-average students. So it is true that there are many bad Kaplan (and Princeton Review) teachers AND the techniques and course structure and materials are not necessarily the best.

While I don't necessarily agree with all of Mike's techniques and approaches, I think his philosophy and strategies, as outlined in the Grammatix guide, are probably light-years better than what most of the national test prep companies teach. And I actually don't think his techniques work ONLY for the average or slightly above-average students. Good techniques should work for everyone, even the most advanced students (I certainly give my most advanced students the same techniques as those that I give the lowest-scoring students), and Mike's probably work for most, if not all, students.

While one can always point to exceptions, my point about the value of outside professional help is simply that it CAN be beneficial and, in some instances, more beneficial than working alone. (There is no doubt, as I have mentioned many times previously, that there are a lot of incompetent "professionals" out there.) Even when students go to the bookstore and buy a bunch of test prep books, that is not entirely self-study. It's taking advice from others, albeit in written form. It would be a lot more difficult to work in a vacuum, SOLELY by working with the Official SAT Study Guide and consulting no other book and no one else. Even Mike concedes that, while a student CAN probably discover all the techniques and strategies by himself, it would most likely take a lot more time. And that's one benefit of tutoring: to make the process a lot more efficient. And that's why I endorse good tutoring when you can afford it. I can help a student crank out a 100-point improvement on a section in 2 to 4 hours, when it would probably take him a good month or two on his own to achieve the same. Moreover, Xiggi mentions students coming to CC to exchange ideas and seek advice from other students to improve their scores. That's called outside help. Maybe not face-to-face help. Maybe not paid outside help, but outside help nonetheless. And even in those cases, do you not think that the student would gain more from sitting down one-on-one with an expert who can diagnose his strengths and weaknesses precisely and fully within 20 minutes and assign him the proper amount of targeted work to improve? I've honed my teaching and tutoring techniques and strategies over years in order to design a program that can maximize a student's improvement; I do think it's more valuable and efficient than almost anything an ordinary student can dream up. I know of virtually no students who have improved more than 300 points combined on the new SAT on their own, yet my students routinely do so. I would love to hear stories of students who have through self-study (not necessarily from Xiggi, but from others). My conclusions, although they may be controversial, are drawn from years of real-world experience, not what something should be "in theory."

So I think we can all agree that outside, professional help can be beneficial, if for no other reason, because it's more efficient. But let's not forget that many students are not quite as motivated and diligent as the ones on CC. And that is another disconnect between theory and practice. In theory, perhaps, every student can improve significantly on his or her own. In practice, this is not true, or we would be seeing a lot more 2100s and 2200s and the SAT average would be MUCH higher. Many students can benefit from a little hand-holding, some structure, and some ass-kicking to get the work, and the right kind of work, done in order to improve or her score significantly. It may seem exorbitant to have a pay a professional $800 (or insert your own number here) just to kick a student's ass and give him the right motivation, but many of my former students have told me that they would NOT have studied or improved otherwise. Not every student will have the initiative, knowledge, and wisdom to design a good self-study course and keep up with it; a good prep course from a competent professional can help provide that structure, motivation, content and strategies, and expert guidance that might be very difficult to come up with on one's own. Granted, a good prep course can be very hard to find, and, as we have established here, MOST classroom and private tutoring courses are NOT very effective. Therefore, in a majority of cases, self-study might be an attractive option.

Another point is that CC is not necessarily the best place to look for students who HAVE benefited from a good prep (tutoring) course. Self-selection probably dictates that most students on this site would prefer self-study (or are ones who have been frustrated by the lack of success in a prep course), so you may not find many success stories here from those who have worked with a professional. My students certainly don't hang out on CC.

I have already said that the "Xiggi method" is great and I agree with most of it. That being said, working through exams alone does not define what I do with my students (although it can certainly be PART of what I do). There is much more to my course and method.

Scores do not define me, either, but they are a good yardstick with which to compare the relative merits of self-preparation and professional help here.

I agree with Mike's point that Tiger Woods would not need a coach to achieve "ordinary" success. But I never said I am helping my students achieve "ordinary" scores. Some of the students I have worked with were shooting for 1500s; others, 1600. In one instance, I worked with a girl who did both a Princeton Review (tutoring) course and self-study for about 8 months and was still stuck at a 1370-1400. And she was a very bright and motivated girl. I was able to help her achieve a 1530 after a few months.

The bottom line is that I would not do what I do and charge what I charge if I did not sincerely think I was genuinely helping my students and if I thought that they would all have achieved the same kinds of score improvements purely on their own. In a way, Xiggi, when you insist that EVERY student is able to achieve amazing improvements purely through self-study, I perceive that you are challenging the value of my services and demeaning what I do ("why should people pay Godot so much money when they can do what he does on their own??"), and that explains why I am perhaps a little defensive here. I am pretty sure that is not your intent, but that is my perception nonetheless.

By the way, I agree wholeheartedly with Mark's post as well.

xiggi · May 27, 2005, 10:03pm

attempt to challenge the value of your work or demean the value of your service?

Everything I have said and done in this thread would contradict that! In this thread, I have discussed the different nature of prep companies. I have invited you, Pete, Mark, Mike, as well as a few others to discuss and critique what I wrote, and make this thread more balanced. I did not invite professional tutors because I thought they would necessarily agree with me! I invited them because I trusted their judgment and integrity, and because I knew how passionate they are about finding the best way to help others.

However, allow me to comment on one issue: I have had the opportunity to become familiar with their work. I have read their book, courses, or posts in the forums. Because of your participation in the forum, I did ask you to participate -not I am a gatekeeper, anyway! I have accepted ALL your claims at face value, and this despite that your courses are not published, that your company does not have a working web presence, that your students do not participate in the forums, and most importantly, that your solutions, strategies, or direct tips have not been very visible in the SAT forum. I believe that the number of questions posed on CC would have given you plenty of opportunities to show how good your strategies are. Again, I do not question that you are great tutor or instructor, but there in the absence of tangible proof, we will have to take your word for it. While I am happy to continue to accept your claims at face value, it makes it a bit harder to read your continuing yet subtle hints that my "theories" have not been validated.

In the past two years, I have done a bit more than advancing idle theories. I have posted countless direct answers and examples, including two approaches in this precise thread. For instance, while the problem of average rates appears with great regularity on CC, I do not believe that you have ever attempted to offer a solution. I welcome you to formulate a better answer than mine for that type of problem.

It is also important to correct your mischaracterization of what self-preparing is and is not. It is not about a student working in a solitary vacuum. It is about using and MAXIMIZING existing resources that are widely available. I believe that I was pretty clear that my approach involved acquiring as many "source books" as possible. For your information, my shopping list has been as wide as it was deep. Not only did I buy about every "typical" SAT offering, but I also bought online courses and many professional books on education subjects not directly related to the SAT. In the end, I believe that my library of information related to TAKING the SAT is as complete as any tutor or prep company. Doing this at a mere fraction of the cost of a bad prep program would not be challenging.

There is, however, an additional point, and that is how does one assimilate the information. In reading about everything that was available on the subject, I have tried to "borrow" what seems to be helpful and "set aside" what seems to be redundant or irrelevant. I am sure that you have done something similar before hanging your sign up in Buffalo. While this does not work for everyone, it is a real possibility for many students. I was happy to recognize that there are cases where professional help is needed and justified, why would you not have the courtesy to recognize that there are alternatives that work as well and, in some cases, better than in the "classical" format. In this instance, it may worth nothing that the NATURAL format to prepare for the SAT should not be the coach-pupil method, but should be a method of self-help. While it is undeniable that someone can prepare for the SAT, it is an obvious fallacy that only outside "help" can deliver positive results.

In the end, Godot, it all boils down to a very simple conclusion. You believe that professional help yields faster, easier, and better results. I believe that it is not always true. We will never be able to settle this difference of opinion. I have my own experience, and you have your own. Since I know nothing about your methods, or about the scope and length of classes, I would not be able to say if it would have been better for me to sit in one of your classes. However, I can emphatically say that it would have to be unique and far-reaching for me to learn something about the test that I did not learn through my solitary efforts.

Oh well, you could always surprise me by posting a few strategies in the SAT forum! :)

Peace!

PS I took a break from posting the "series". The next installments will come soon.

Godot · May 27, 2005, 10:10pm

Vocabulary

I can totally understand Mike's views on vocabulary and the pitfalls associated with learning vocabulary blindly. It's true that there are many words with secondary or tertiary meanings that can often take a student by surprise on the exam and cause errors. It's also true that a student may use a word inappropriately despite having studied a word. So I can sympathize with Mike's concerns about learning vocabulary.

These concerns alone, however, should not deter one from learning vocabulary to improve on an exam such as the SAT. If one word out of ten will cause problems such as the ones that Mike mentions, the other nine words will still be useful on the exam. You should understand that I ALSO give my students strategies and techniques to handle the questions, besides advocating knowing the words. Often, a student CAN do quite well on the sentence completions despite not knowing many words, but my aim is to MAXIMIZE scores, not just to get "pretty good" scores. So I give them all the tools to do that; this can include learning vocabulary. To avoid the dangers and risks Mike points out, I make sure that my students know all the various definitions and sub-senses a word has, and understands how to use it in context. If one is diligent about studying words properly, understanding all the nuances of each particular word, learning vocabulary should not be detrimental. You should also know that once I push a student up to 90% or higher on the Sentence Completion questions (and this happens very often), I usually stop pushing vocabulary. I only push the tool as much as I need to to get the results we desire.

There is also a concern about which word lists to use. This is a very valid concern, since most word lists are inaccurate and ineffective. Barron's 3500-word list is especially notorious, but I doubt most sane students have the discipline and motivation to work through their entire list. Their "High-Frequency Word List," however, is not bad, and I have used it to good effect in the past with students. Currently, I use the 323-word list in RocketReview. It's proven to be quite sufficient and targeted for my students. I don't require any more; there is not much additional value in having my students learn 700 words.

Preparation Time

My courses typically last one to two months. This is usually enough time for a student to learn the strategies and content and experience sufficient practice to achieve a very good score improvement. I know of tutoring companies that advise students to study for a year and do up to 80 hours or more of tutoring. To me, this is a signal that the courses are not very good. Given 50 hours or more with any student, I am fairly confident that I can get most, if not all, students up to a 2100 or higher. The reality, however, is that most students do not wish to work that long (or do not have the time -- keep in mind that some students come up to me with only weeks before the exam), nor are their parents willing to pay me the amount necessary to perform that many hours, so we "settle" for a 400-point improvement. My most popular course, a 28-hour course, has achieved very good results so far with the New SAT students.

Mike is correct in that big improvements can be achieved in a short amount of time. I have certainly done it with many students in the past, but, then again, every student is different and some certainly need more time to improve significantly, so I am not willing to do a strict 12-hour course with every student just because the last student improved quite a bit in merely 12 hours. His 9-hour course sounds a little bit too condensed to me, but I'm sure his students have gotten some good results from it. I choose to take a little more time to ensure that my students are not overwhelmed and achieve their highest possible scores, while still keeping the process efficient and cost-effective. This means, in most cases, about two to three months.

shojomo · May 27, 2005, 10:24pm

Please Xiggi, don't stop. I've been waiting and watching for the next installment. They are wonderful. (And who would have thought that reading about SAT prep could be characterized as "wonderful?")

Godot · May 27, 2005, 10:27pm

Xiggi,

I must say I am enjoying this debate. :) Thank you for recognizing the value of my services and for inviting me to comment here. I hope that you will not impugn my views solely because I have not given "strategies" in response to questions. I don't think that I ever stated that one MUST acquire professional help. In fact, I think I've been quite adamant in advising CCers that self-study may be the best option in most cases. Therefore, I have already recognized that there are "alternatives" that can work, and work just as well or better. Forgive me here, but it's just that in my experience (and yours may be different), students do not improve as much through self-study. Now, please note that this is a very limited statement. This statement applies solely to my students, ones that I have personally worked with. I'm NOT saying that professional help is better in every instance, for every student! Additionally, all the experts that have weighed in here, including you and Mike, have acknowledged that self-study would be a good option for the motivated and disciplined students, not for ALL students!

So I don't think we really disagree on much.

However, I don't understand why the "natural" format for improving on the SAT MUST be the self-study approach. Not every student will be "naturally" good at the SAT, and not every student will be equally equipped to aid himself or herself, even with a formidable shopping list of books. Additionally, you never answered my argument that simply coming to CC and seeking the advice of others is a form of "outside help." It may be "natural" for some students to take one practice exam and score a 2400 on the SAT, but it may be more "natural" for another student, one who may not be as bright, motivated, or good at taking standardized exams or figuring out patterns and strategies, to seek the advice and guidance of a qualified expert and score a 2400 through those means.

Finally, while I respect you a great deal, I don't think that answering questions and posting strategies should be the sole mark of a qualified professional or expert. Like Mike here, I may be a little wary of "giving away the store" and diluting the value of my intellectual property. I hope you can appreciate that. That doesn't mean I don't help students here. I have helped many students on CC with their exams, including offering free advice through e-mails or private messages and sending them vocab lists. I don't advertise this, since I don't see the need to, but I'm sure they can vouch for me, if they are still here. In many cases, my advice is individual and personal, and cannot necessarily be generalized into a "strategy." Each one of my students has different profiles and different needs. Additionally, much of what I use with my students is already quite well-known, so I see no need to post a technique that many students may be aware of.

xiggi · May 27, 2005, 10:45pm

I have list of about 100 words that appear on EVERY SAT. I guarantee that the words will be there.

The only problem is that words are mostly words such triangle, degree, side, circle, and that they all appear in the Math sections. :)

Regarding list of words, it is good to remember what happened to the Testmaster(s) list. The list gained an almost cult-like status. It was so blown out of proportion that people claimed that Roger Israni had moles inside ETS or had stolen ETS' mathematical models -even if the notion that ETS would use a mathematical model to "predict" words on its own test is rather ridiculous!

The star status of THE list was short lived when students realized that the high occurrence of the words on one test was followed by an almost total absence on the next test. The difference had nothing to do with any great secrets: TCB had simply not used a past test the second time around.

There is some validity in reading a list of selected words since most of them are mere compilation of recent tests. It established the TYPE of words that might show up. Any claim that a list is a GOOD predictor is contradicted (quite easily and repeatdely) by simple proofs. Taking the list and matching it to recent tests shows a dismal correlation. However, that does not phase the "word list lovers" who then change tactics by advancing that "if a student is able to recognize ONE word from a list, that means 10 points more, and it is a bonus". The reality is that the mere fact that the word appeared did not mean the student would NOT have answered the question correctly. After all, there is POE and guessing!

That said, I do not disagree with the idea that an original list of 200 to 300 words, which part of a programmed plan of study over a period of time, can be beneficial. But, trying to memorize or cram hundreds of words the night before a test is always a bad idea.

It is all about maintaining a positive time investment/reward ratio.

Godot · May 27, 2005, 10:54pm

Xiggi,

Since you asked for some proof of my expertise, here's one little piece I can offer right now:

The SAT Math section quite often asks students to sum up arithmetic sequences.

Let's take this sample question:

Let A = sum of the positive odd integers less than 100.
Let B = sum of the positive even integers less than or equal to 100

Find the difference between B and A.

While there are certainly alternative solutions, one direct means of attack would be to come up with a formula to sum arithmetic sequences quickly. This is a result well-known to mathematicians and advanced math students, but one that is not emphasized in most SAT books I have seen.

Namely,

sum of an arithmetic sequence = (first term + last term)/2 * (number of terms)

Using this approach, the question can be done in about 30 seconds. No major SAT book that I know of teaches this, yet it's not that difficult for any student to memorize it.

Here's another neat little "trick." In dealing with remainder questions, many students get confused. I tell them that one thing they can do is to divide the number by the divisor and find the quotient and then use a very simple procedure to find the remainder:

Let's do an example:

Find the remainder when 15753 is divided by 13.

Solution:

Divide 15753 by 13 on the calculator. You will get 1211.769231.... Subtract the integer part (1211) from the quotient, and you get 0.769231.... Now, multiply that number by the divisor, 13, and you get the remainder, 10. Again, no book that I know of teaches this technique.

Hope you enjoyed them.

xiggi · May 27, 2005, 11:02pm

Godot, as you know, I haven't seen many debates I didn't enjoy. However, I do not want this thread to become a lengthy debate. While we may enjoy it and find it instructive, the rest of the readers might get bored with all our "bickering".

Allow me to print this discussion and read it calmly. I'd like to move away from where we disagree and focus on our points of agreements. I know that we learn more from spirited and healthy disagreements than from polite agreements.

Let's wrap up this thread with the "good stuff" only; we can restart the battle on a different terrain ... soon!

Godot · May 27, 2005, 11:04pm

Xiggi,

Are you aware that Roger Israni used to work for ETS and wrote actual SAT questions for them? Therefore, it actually IS quite possible that he knew of some sort of mathematical model for predicting words appearing on the SAT. And why would it be so ludicrous to think that ETS uses some kind of model to dictate which words appear on future SATs? That might be one way for them to ensure the rough equivalence in difficulty of different forms and/or to "rotate" words enough to beat the numerous published word lists out there (which often are not updated frequently)! Nevertheless, whatever is the case, it is hard to deny that some words DO appear frequently on the SAT, and there can be some value in learning this "core" list of words. One such word I can think of off the top of my head is "ambivalent." If this word does not appear in the Sentence Completions section, it's at least good to know it for a potential Reading Comprehension question.

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