Navidad

My son took a SAT prep course (one of the two best prep course in the market - $900) in 9th grade summer. According to him the course was designed for below average student, and teacher taught math and grammer wrong. He said it was waste of money.

Navidad

sorry, I misspelled grammar.

amb3r

But private tutors or small group classes can target lessons towards each child's ability level and specific weaknesses. That's why I think they're more productive than large classes. Also, jyber209, you were able to go over your son's practice tests with him and identify commonly made mistakes. But some parents who hope their children will score high are, and whose children want to improve, are immigrants who aren't proficient at English, and would probably get around a 400 or so if they had to take the test sometimes. So when there's nobody in the house to help out, hiring outside help to do what you did at a reasonable cost might be the best option.

I think that sometimes hiring a private teacher can be the most efficient and dependable way to increase your SAT score significantly in a few months' time - more so than simply reading the New York Times or borrowing literature from the library, possibly even more so than going through prep books by yourself. Teachers know what concepts are likely to trip students up, they know what the important concepts are, they can give you tips and suggestions that no book or magazine will, they can provide feedback to your work, they can explain away gaps in your knowledge in an accessible way until they know you understand, and they can tailor your homework to target weak areas. So to answer the original question, I believe that expensive test prep courses can work better than any other course of action (but they don't have to be expensive to be good).

Mentor

Prep courses are a waste of money.

It's much more worthwhile to buy a few practice books and self-test.

GuitarRckr

I don't know if anyone has said this already, but I'll put it out: Prep classes are good for FORCING you to practice/review the material, but personally, I find that if you are motivated and can devote some time on your own to review the material, you can do just as well as someone who had a prep class behind them. Sometimes prep classes can give you a few tips/tricks, but I think the books can do that as well.

Godot

This question comes up once every few months. I've already posted my thoughts previously, but I'm not sure if these posts have been archived.

Some quick background: In case you don't know, I own my own test preparation company (a local company), focusing primarily on one-on-one private tutoring (for mostly SAT, although we do tutoring for a number of other standardized exams as well). We also recently concluded SAT classroom courses at two private high schools for the March 1 SAT.

There is no single simple answer to the original question. One must consider the student's starting score, his or her location, and the test preparation companies and resources in the area. Unfortunately, much of the SAT preparation industry is populated with companies and teachers/tutors who are mediocre at best and incompetent at worst. I would include among this group the two well-known national test preparation companies. Kaplan, for example, actually shortened their SAT course from 24 (classroom instruction) hours to 20 hours when the SAT added the Writing section! Princeton Review courses are a bit better, but still not very effective. (In contrast, my classroom course includes 39 hours of instruction.) If this is all you have access to in your area, and your starting score is above average, self-study is probably the best path.

However, there are definitely a few reputable companies and capable tutors. A great SAT tutor or teacher, first of all, should be capable of scoring a 2350+ himself on the SAT. Moreover, he should have a track record of solid improvements with past students. And he should be able to boast of score improvements of 250-300+ points within 20-30 hours of tutoring with students with starting scores of below 1800. Finally, look for some kind of money-back score improvement guarantee. Some companies and tutors shy away from guarantees and like to explain that, while their students achieve significant score improvements in general, they do not believe in guarantees. This usually means that they are not confident in their abilities. As long as the guarantees carry strict conditions and restrictions (say, requiring a student to complete all of the homework, attend all of the sessions, and have a starting score in a certain range), a competent and experienced tutor should have no problem in guaranteeing a certain minimum score improvement for his students.

Given that you have access to a great company or tutor and cost is not much of a barrier, SAT preparation is probably effective in most cases, even for the highest-scoring students. (Make sure, however, that the tutor/teacher has had experience and success in dealing with high-scoring students.) The analogy of a coach for a sport or another endeavor (such as piano) comes to mind. Although the analogy is not perfect, it is definitely apt. An experienced SAT tutor, who has studied the test inside and out and dealt with students of all shapes and sizes, can diagnose a student’s strengths and weaknesses and issues, offer the appropriate instruction, including strategies and techniques, and assign the appropriate homework much more quickly and effectively than the student can do for herself. There is simply no way an ordinary student, even one who is highly intelligent, will beat an experienced and competent tutor (who has, say, scored a 2380 on his own SAT) who has studied and worked with the test for years and has tutored or taught dozens, if not hundreds, of students, successfully. Give me a student who is scoring a 640 in Math, and in about 4-6 hours, I can probably raise her score to a 710 or higher, something she may not be able to accomplish on her own in a month. You’re not only paying the money for the tutor’s knowledge of the SAT and various techniques and strategies (which you can perhaps gain on your own after studying a few SAT books and working a few practice exams), but also his vast experience with and insight into the exam, common issues and habits of students, the peculiar needs of individual students, the best books and questions on the market (if he is not using materials he wrote himself), what and how much to assign as homework, how to break through barriers and plateaus, etc. The latter set of skills and insights are certainly not ones an ordinary student with a limited amount of time will be able to secure on her own! There is also the issue of motivation and discipline, and this is an important one. In an ideal world, a student will be able to create her own study schedule and stick to it and devote a few hours to learning the various concepts and perfecting her skills every week. In the real world, this is not usually the case (of course, CCers are the exception to the rule). A tutor or a course can provide that necessary structure, motivation, and discipline that are so essential to a good score increase. And it is definitely not true that inherently unmotivated students will get nothing from a tutor or a course. A great teacher or tutor is able to spark the motivation in his student, no matter what she came in with. One quick case study I would offer is a student, with whom I recently finished working, who started with a 2140 on her first diagnostic SAT and achieved a 2390 on a recent diagnostic test. (Whether she scores a 2390 or 2400 on the March 1 SAT is largely a matter of luck, but I would be very surprised if she scores below 2350.) If you ask her or her parents, they will testify that the tutoring has indeed helped a great deal and that she would have probably not achieved a 2390 through self-study alone.

I have a strong objection to the characterization of test preparation as “cheating” or unethical. Legitimate and real forms of cheating already abound on the SAT. Witness the students who get fake IDs and take the test for others, look at their neighbors’ answers, discuss the questions and answers during the breaks, etc. SAT preparation may seem unfair, but it is certainly not unethical. Would you call low-cost or free SAT preparation courses for low-income or underprivileged students unethical? Would you label using College Board’s own online SAT course “cheating”? Would you consider preparing and studying for a school exam unethical? Is it unethical for a student to have “naturally” learned various test-taking techniques during his high school years? I would highly doubt it. What some people have a problem with is that SAT preparation, which can sometimes be costly, does not seem egalitarian and that higher-income students seem to have more access to SAT preparation. The solution, which many have already proposed, is that preparing for the SAT need not always be expensive. And SAT preparation actually levels the playing field in many cases: an intelligent student with strong grades doesn’t always perform as well on the SAT as another equally intelligent student with the same grades. My job is to shore up any weaknesses the first student may have in her knowledge or skills, train her to look at and work the questions a certain way, and give her the confidence to achieve a good score on the exam. These are skills and traits that the second student likely already possesses because she acquired them through other means, at other times.

One big issue that most CCers do not appreciate, since they are typically quite intelligent and very motivated and driven students and perform well on exams, is that some students have serious and deep-seated issues and difficulties with taking a standardized exam (and even school exams) such as the SAT. Some students have profound self-image issues: they don’t see themselves as intelligent; they don’t think they are good test-takers; they do not think they deserve good scores; they think they can do well on diagnostic tests, but they will always “bomb” or “choke” on the real thing; their family members are negative, etc. They may also have serious test anxiety. These are often issues that are almost intractable and very difficult or nearly impossible for a student to handle and correct on his own. Again, a great tutor will have experience with such students and issues and be able to identify and effectively address and correct these issues. You may not face these obstacles, but you should not underestimate the importance of professional help for students who do deal with these issues. SAT preparation may actually essential for such students if they hope to earn "respectable" scores.

While I respect Xiggi and his advice greatly, there is no “one-size-fits-all” answer to SAT preparation. For one thing, not every student is able to self-diagnose very well, and an experienced expert worth his salt is always able to do a better job more efficiently. One can always find students who achieved a certain score (say, a 2350) with self-study or even with minimal preparation period. But one student or score, or even several students and scores, will not prove a theory or principle. There will always be exceptions to the rule, and it would be a sad world indeed if all high scorers on the SAT needed 40 hours of SAT tutoring to achieve their scores! And, who is to say that even the "exceptions" would not have achieved even higher scores with some form of expert assistance?

I hope you appreciated my response.

noidea123

Oftentimes the students who enroll in such programs are applying to the top-tier universities. My personal experience with pretty much all standardized tests is that the important thing is to learn HOW to take the test (by that I mean what type of questions they ask, how things are phrased, what they're looking for) and all this can be accomplished by browsing any of the numerous prep books. Reviewing the concepts is certainly important, but if one hasn't learned the basic rules of grammar yet, it is going to be difficult and stressful to learn them for the SAT.

I studied for one hour the night before, half an hour on the car ride there, and I got a 2290. Also, a sidenote: one of the most popular SAT prep courses is through Kaplan, and all you have to do is go on Craigslist.com to see the numerous requests for Kaplan "teachers", saying that it is not a major time commitment and that pretty much anyone can do it (with training).

Godot

noidea123,

You are simply proving my point that there will always be students who can score well on the SAT without much preparation. Your advice of learning how to take the test is an important piece of advice, of course, but what this involves and how much time it would take exactly vary a great deal with individual students. It is misleading to suggest that what worked for you will necessarily work just as well for all other students. In other words, "browsing" a few preparation books is unlikely to enable a student starting with an 1800 to score a 2290. If that were the case, we would have a lot more 2300+ scorers in the country! (By the way, the mere fact that a student is able to score, say, a 2350 with little preparation, and his friend "only" scored an 1850 after hours of preparation and tutoring does not, without knowing other information, actually demonstrate anything about the effectiveness of SAT preparation or tutoring. If the friend started with a 1550 on the first diagnostic test, I would argue that the preparation was quite effective. On the other hand, if 1950 was his starting score, the course was definitely not effective! The improvement number is the proper yardstick (one of a few, of course) with which to measure the quality and effectiveness of a course or a tutor, not the absolute final score.)

And students who take SAT preparation courses are definitely not all aiming for top-tier schools. Many of the students are actually quite average, and even with huge score improvements in their courses, they are still not looking to apply to, say, a top-20 school. (For example, a student can move her score up from a 1600 to a 2000, a very nice improvement, but still not have a high enough score for the top schools.)

QuantMech

Wow, Godot, I've been waiting for you to show up.
(Sorry, I know it's awful!)

tokenadult

This is an important point. I spoke to one young man who has a thriving test-prep business, and he said his clients fall mostly into two categories:

a) families who are first-generation immigrants to the United States, who view paid test prep as a cultural norm from their home countries, and who sign up for ALL available test prep courses in a given community, without even inquiring about the reputation of the companies or their particular characteristics,

and

b) families whose children are scoring in the low 400s or below on sections of the SAT before the test-prep course begins.

QuantMech

^^Godot,

All joking aside, I'm glad you showed up on this thread, because you could answer a few of the questions I have raised earlier about SAT prep courses:

How does your guaranteed score increase taper off as the student's starting score goes up? You mentioned typical increases of 250-300 points for students starting at 1800 on the first diagnostic test, and gave one example where you are predicting a score increase of at least 210 for a student who started at 2140 (but who might be atypical). In particular, if a student scores 2300+ on the first diagnostic test, do you offer any guarantee?

If a student completes your program and goes from 1800 on the first diagnostic test to 2100 on the actual SAT, how much further above 2100 could you move that student in another 39 hours of tutoring (and over what time interval)?

Godot

QuantMech,

Those are good questions. The score improvement guarantee depends on the length of the tutoring course. The most generous guarantees go with the longest courses, of course. Typically, we guarantee a 220-point improvement for a student starting with below an 1800 in a 30-hour course and a 280-point improvement for the same student in a 40-hour course. The guarantee for 1800+ scores tapers off, as you observed, until the 2300+ level, at which we guarantee a 30- or 40-point improvement (I have all the numbers in a file, which I don't have with me right now). For a starting score of 1900 in a 30-hour course, for example, the guarantee would be roughly a 2050+ (again, I am estimating the number) and perhaps a 2100+ in a 40-hour course. The guarantees, as you might expect, represent the lower ends of the expected final score ranges.

We can definitely improve the score for a student starting with a 2100 who has already done a first course with us. However, it would, in general, take more tutoring time to produce a similar increase the second time for 2 reasons: 1) the student is starting with a higher score and 2) the student has already been exposed to all of the strategies and techniques and achieved a good score increase, and it takes more work and time to uncover and address any subtle gaps, weaknesses, and issues he might still have, to break beyond the "plateau," and to fine-tune and perfect his approaches to various question types. In principle, there is really no limit to how high a student starting with a 2100, even in a second course, can score at the end of the course. Typically, I would expect such a student to score at least a 2250 or so in 30 hours or more of tutoring in a second course. Ideally, the course would run for about 7 to 10 weeks.

By the way, the "39 hours" figure applied to the classroom courses we ran.

Funkmaster

You might want to check out the date the results were taken on the study you posted (first post). It was so long ago, I'm sure test prep courses have improved since then.

QuantMech

I must admit that I'm surprised by the increases that Godot's coaching can produce, particularly if a student who scores 1800 on the first test could score 2250 less than 6 months later. Admittedly, when I checked the composite score tables (a moment ago) on a link provided (some time ago, on another thread) by tokenadult, I was also surprised that a score of 1800 put a student in the 81st %ile--so maybe moving from the 81st %ile to the 99th is not so surprising. Still . . . this considerably undermines my confidence in the significance of SAT scores.

It seems to me that College Board needs to work a LOT harder to be less predictable, in terms of the questions.

I wonder, Godot, when you are coaching students individually, do you perceive any academic difference between the students who have originally scored 1800 vs. those who have originally scored 2100? or 2300?

Also, is anyone up for a straw poll? Namely, among 2300+ scorers you know, did the student take a prep course or not? (No statistical significance, but I'd be interested in increasing the "N" in my anecdotal evidence.)

JKJKJK09

at the start yes...now NO!!!!!!!!