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Comment by MisterBastahrd | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. I see it as another way to pull another ladder up so that the kid who didn't get to go to the private prep school to train to take a test isn't being discriminated against for his parents' financial position. There are literally entire private schools where I grew up whose average student performs better than the best public school student.

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That's probably selection bias.

The SAT is actually pretty tough test to game. Anxiety drives parents to pay a lot for test prep, but there isn't much indication that it actually improves scores.

Do you have any verifiable information to back up the claim that test prep doesn't improve scores?

I have a handful of sources that disagree.

https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/R171...

https://collegefinance.com/college-admissions/does-sat-prep-...

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/12/04/why-should-...

Your second link clicks thru to Slate which links to this: https://nepc.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/Briggs_Theeffe...

"Powers and Rock concluded that the combined effect of coaching on the SAT I is between 21 and 34 points."

clearly parent commenter was hoping no one would actually read the "handful of sources" with the "verified information" that the scores are improved. you literally could improve your score more by getting a good night's sleep. i really cannot empathize with the level of self-delusion necessary to be that intentionally misleading.

Your third source summarizes the common knowledge that has already been stated here: anyone can practice on their own with cheap or free materials to achieve the same benefit of those expensive classes.

"Anyone can practice" is pretty meaningless. The largest component of benefit of expensive classes is how they motivate students. Motivating students (unless they are already self-motivated) is very difficult and skill and resource intensive, that's why the service is expensive.

In a class what is it that finally motivates the unmotivated? Fear of failing the exam. You already got this scary motivator with standardized testing. If you're talking about self-study versus a taking a college class to learn something, then I'd agree with you. Also of course, preparing for a general test is easy review material you don't need a skilled teacher to coach you through.

I used to teach a free SAT prep for underprivileged high schools in Southern Cali. I found it amazing how much I could improve scores of kids who were engaged. Unfortunately, only about a third of the kids were really engaged. But going from 800 to 1100 I felt like I could do for almost any engaged student. And 1200 to 1400 was harder, but I think if you give me a year -- I could do that for a lot of students too.

If you're at 1550 I probably can't help you -- at least if you're like me -- you sometimes just read a question wrong.

I don't know about your SATs, but here in Eastern EU I've been taking advanced math as school leaving exam and I had some money that allowed me to visit tutor like thrice.

I had problems with geometry and decided to get some help with one of its branches. Tutor explained me stuff, gave exercises that I did and so on.

At the real exam there was one task from this geometry branch and I managed to do it. I don't know whether I'd be able to do it without going to those lessons, hard to say.

But at the end of the day it gave me 5 of 50 points at this exam, so I basically in very simplified version I received 10% on hard exam for less than 10% of minimal wage.

Of course it'd be naive to think that it scales like that, but you get the point.

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