juillet

My general experience after being a test-prep tutor for a major test-prep company for a year, and freelancing for two years after:

1. Everything that you're paying $1000 and up for, you can find in a $30 prep book. You are essentially paying for someone to regurgitate the material in the book to you.

2. My former company charges you $2,300 (OR MORE! The article cites a $4,000 fee) to be tutored by a college kid who's getting paid $14-20 an hour (depending on location) for 32 hours plus $0.38/mile for travel, two books that cost $30 each at your local bookstore, and online resources that are comparable to what you can find for free on the 'net.

You could find the same kid to tutor you the same stuff for the same amount of time ($640 - or hell - let's even say you're paying him $30 an hour, so that's $960) and buy those two books from the bookstore (~$60 plus tax) and save $1,300-1,600 or more. The college kid will be happy because you're paying him more than the company, and you'll be happy because you have college book money in your pocket.

3. Test prep tutors for my particular company have speculated for quite some time that the company downscales the scores on the practice tests for the GRE and the SAT - both the ones that come in the prep books and the ones that you can take at the facility. This downscaling ensures that you have a score increase -- essentially, they tell you you did worse than you really did, and when you do better, it looks like it's because of them. We have no proof, but many of my students (both when I taught for the company and when I freelanced) felt that the scores from company books scale you down.

3. The SAT is designed to be a reliable test of reasoning skill. Reliability, in educational psychology, is when a test consistently gives people around the same scores every time they take it. Is it possible to make huge jumps in scores? Yes, with a lot of studying. Is it common? Not really. Numerous SAT studies show that most students score slightly higher the second time they take it, and that there is no significant difference between the second time and any subsequent times.

At least Kaplan and Princeton Review try to keep some integrity in the process by not promising a specific score increase. Any company that cites you a specific number that you can increase should be handled with care. For one thing, when you are already scoring in the higher echelons, it is harder to score higher -- because there's nowhere to go and because the concepts that will tip you over into 800-land are harder to grasp.