In our area $1000-$2000 is pretty common. DS did his own research among his tiger cub friends and identified the best program for him. It was around $1500 and helped him go from a first try practice 31 to a 35 on the real ACT when he took it. I thought it was totally worth it and money well spent. Right up until I discovered CC and found out that elite schools apparently don’t care about test scores anymore.
Just because my kid didn’t need prep to score well doesn’t mean that another kid won’t benefit tremendously from prep. The problem is how to know if the prep is really high quality, though.
Post #20: Don’t let them fool you. They still do care. It’s just that there’s not a simple linear relationship between scores and admission. There are more than high test scores to make a strong application.