> I assert that all people who don't do "well" on the SAT fall into the two categories you posed. I think that's provably wrong. SAT prep courses offer a bump,

> I assert that all people who don't do "well" on the SAT fall into the two categories you posed. I think that's provably wrong. SAT prep courses offer a bump, but even ones with big promises don't deliver all that well. Evidence suggests 300 points is very large. The "smart but unstudied" pool I mentioned is likely small and tends to get strong gains up front - these are people who get 100+ points from the PSAT or 1-2 practice tests. (This pool is anecdotal. I knew several people in it, but I don't know of studies at the high end of the scale.) The other pool is real but not the same as you described. It largely represents people who missed core content like 'geometry' and did prep so long and extensive they learned totally new material there. There are lots of kids with low scores from bad education, agreed, but fixing that is not "studied for a week" stuff. More broadly, I'm saying that in practice "I studied for a week and gained 300 points" is an extreme outlier. Mostly people either see <100 gains from studying or only see big gains from serious, new-content education.