Post #33, but this thread is about Asians, so he kind of implied it.
Feeling that “some prep is necessary” does not necessarily mean that one thinks that any particular test-prep cram school (or type of such school) is a good value for the time and money. Indeed, I don’t see why the high value preparation (test familiarization and such) is difficult to do in a relatively short time at home or in the library. But doing hundreds of SAT(-like) questions or memorizing thousands of supposed SAT words seems like a low value proposition; the kid’s time would likely better be spent doing other academic, intellectual, athletic, and/or artistic activities.
Is that really “one of the best public magnet high schools in the country”? (Of course, a common criticism of IB programs is the very high volume workload compared to the content matter learned – one can argue that IB programs are also not exactly high value in terms of learning for the amount of time spent.)
@Hunt, maybe I’m dense, but I don’t see why you think those 2 are contradictory positions.
For instance, someone could believe that lots of people besides Mexicans like Cinco de Mayo
and
criticizing Cinco de Mayo is anti-Mexican.
I don’t see the contradiction there. Someone could certainly hold both views and be consistent.
@ucbalumnus . I do not really know how exactly they were prepping but maybe it was not a cram. Maybe they just tried to teach kids math and English around SAT test. It was 2 days a week, Friday and Saturday and he would get some homework. Every Saturday they would write a full timed test and then analyze it. He could probably clear 2100 without this prep. His school is considered a peer of Stu and TJ but it is not all STEM. Very competitive to get in. I later learned that hagwon had a prep course for the admission test for a very affordable price of 3K (now 5K).
Not sure about the value of IB program but I saw that he read Nietzsche, Chekhov, Karl Marx and a bunch of other interesting literature. Sounds like fun but did not help with English grammar.
Perhaps specifically for the writing section? Doesn’t seem to me that the other sections emphasize English grammar. The predecessor of the writing section, an earlier form of the Achievement Test in English language (not literature), was a multiple choice grammar test, so perhaps the grading of the successor essay-based tests emphasizes grammar quite a bit.
So what was his SAT score after preparation, and for how many weeks was this preparation? If he was already at the 2100+ level without preparation, the relatively limited additional gains possible from preparation make the value proposition of spending many weekends taking practice tests to be less than appealing.
Seems quite expensive. Of course, your sentence implies that he got in without you needing to spend $3,000-$5,000 on test-prep.