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>It's far easier for rich students to game GPA, college essays and extracurriculars than it is for them to game the SAT. Disagree. I worked for the Princeton

>It's far easier for rich students to game GPA, college essays and extracurriculars than it is for them to game the SAT. Disagree. I worked for the Princeton Review while in college back in the day. We would outright guarantee 99th percentile for one on one tutoring. If you didn't get 99th percentile the course was refunded or you could take it again. For classroom tutoring we would guarantee some improvement of I believe 200 (out of 1600) with the same refund or take it again option. Candidly, no one would pay for a prep course for a 30 point gain. These course are expensive. Some of them hundreds of dollars per hour. The cited research is pretty fundamentally flawed. "Although extensive, the academic research base does have limitations. Most notably, few published studies have been conducted on students taking admission tests since 2000. Only two studies have been published on the effects for ACT scores, and no studies have been published since the 2005 change to the SAT, which added the Writ- ing section among other changes." This position also doesn't pass the sniff test. GPA is accumulated over four years of study. SAT/ACT is a single test. You can't retroactively improve your GPA by doing better in the past. But you can dramatically improve your SAT/ACT results.

bzbarsky 5y ago
> Candidly, no one would pay for a prep course for a 30 point gain. My understanding of the research in this area is that the 30 point gain is if you compare people who take a prep course to people who put in an equivalent amount of time preparing on their own with the widely available (e.g. can check them out of the local public library in many cases) preparation materials. The 200 point gain is if you compare people who did the prep to people who have not done any prep. The set of people who can't make themselves put in the time without the structure of a course would benefit by a lot more than 30 points from the course, and would pay for it. And do.
mgh2 5y ago
Maybe there was another variable at play: language. SATs are in English. If English is not a student's primary language and fluency improves as they advance academically, up to a plateau with age. Not sure if this was properly controlled in SAT studies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11007/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11007/
- hn_user82179 5y ago
  Glad you mentioned this. I went to a strong wealthy public high school with a high asian population (~50%?). When I was there, a lot of my friends were 2nd generation immigrants and their parents still spoke their native language at home. Their kids (my friends) were perfectly fluent/native in English but didn't do as well in the "edge vocabulary" parts of the SAT and I always figured that was why (in comparison to me and my english-at-home parents).
BadCookie 5y ago
I vaguely recall a question on the Duke University application about what assistance you received with your college application efforts. (I can’t remember if test prep was included specifically.) I’m sure that some people lie by omission, but maybe asking this question is better than not asking it.
nullc 5y ago
> If you didn't get 99th percentile the course was refunded or you could take it again Plenty of other domains have study programs with similar guarantees where the program has little to no effect-- it's a simple economic calculation: Set your rates so you make a good profit even if the program has no effect (even if you allow retaking the course, students won't be willing to waste their time and yours forever). It would be more informative if you knew the actual before/after performance for the program. Elsewhere this has been studied (see links in the thread) and the improvement wasn't that substantial. > You can't retroactively improve your GPA by doing better in the past. Indeed, which means that people who's families have been carefully shepherding their education since they were much younger have an _insurmountable_ advantage in the GPA game. For people people who don't come from highly educated families, they only learn about the GPA boosting games as they start thinking about college years to late to take full advantage of them.
- parkingrift 5y ago
  >Plenty of other domains have study programs with similar guarantees where the program has little to no effect-- it's a simple economic calculation: Set your rates so you make a good profit even if the program has no effect (even if you allow retaking the course, students won't be willing to waste their time and yours forever). They offer a refund or to retake the course. It is indeed a simple economic calculation. The company would quickly go bankrupt if a sizable percentage of students were refunding. The company itself, and the location I worked, had excellent reviews. Even today it has a 4.9 star rating on Google Maps. Quite a high rating for a service that people in this comment section proclaim has no impact. Intuitively, how could it be correct that people pay thousands of dollars on these courses and receive zero or near to zero benefit from them? If this were true no one would take the courses, the courses would be rated poorly, and the underlying business would fail. >Indeed, which means that people who's families have been carefully shepherding their education since they were much younger have an _insurmountable_ advantage in the GPA game. Sure, but the context is "which is easier to game." To game the GPA takes four years of study and prep and you must start doing it at the beginning of grade 9. Tens of thousands of dollars and preparation+work over multiple years. To game the SAT or ACT you must spend a few thousand dollars during grade 11 or grade 12.

bzbarsky 5y ago

> Candidly, no one would pay for a prep course for a 30 point gain. My understanding of the research in this area is that the 30 point gain is if you compare people who take a prep course to people who put in an equivalent amount of time preparing on their own with the widely available (e.g. can check them out of the local public library in many cases) preparation materials. The 200 point gain is if you compare people who did the prep to people who have not done any prep. The set of people who can't make themselves put in the time without the structure of a course would benefit by a lot more than 30 points from the course, and would pay for it. And do.

mgh2 5y ago

Maybe there was another variable at play: language. SATs are in English. If English is not a student's primary language and fluency improves as they advance academically, up to a plateau with age. Not sure if this was properly controlled in SAT studies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11007/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11007/

hn_user82179 5y ago
Glad you mentioned this. I went to a strong wealthy public high school with a high asian population (~50%?). When I was there, a lot of my friends were 2nd generation immigrants and their parents still spoke their native language at home. Their kids (my friends) were perfectly fluent/native in English but didn't do as well in the "edge vocabulary" parts of the SAT and I always figured that was why (in comparison to me and my english-at-home parents).

BadCookie 5y ago

I vaguely recall a question on the Duke University application about what assistance you received with your college application efforts. (I can’t remember if test prep was included specifically.) I’m sure that some people lie by omission, but maybe asking this question is better than not asking it.

nullc 5y ago

> If you didn't get 99th percentile the course was refunded or you could take it again Plenty of other domains have study programs with similar guarantees where the program has little to no effect-- it's a simple economic calculation: Set your rates so you make a good profit even if the program has no effect (even if you allow retaking the course, students won't be willing to waste their time and yours forever). It would be more informative if you knew the actual before/after performance for the program. Elsewhere this has been studied (see links in the thread) and the improvement wasn't that substantial. > You can't retroactively improve your GPA by doing better in the past. Indeed, which means that people who's families have been carefully shepherding their education since they were much younger have an _insurmountable_ advantage in the GPA game. For people people who don't come from highly educated families, they only learn about the GPA boosting games as they start thinking about college years to late to take full advantage of them.

parkingrift 5y ago
>Plenty of other domains have study programs with similar guarantees where the program has little to no effect-- it's a simple economic calculation: Set your rates so you make a good profit even if the program has no effect (even if you allow retaking the course, students won't be willing to waste their time and yours forever). They offer a refund or to retake the course. It is indeed a simple economic calculation. The company would quickly go bankrupt if a sizable percentage of students were refunding. The company itself, and the location I worked, had excellent reviews. Even today it has a 4.9 star rating on Google Maps. Quite a high rating for a service that people in this comment section proclaim has no impact. Intuitively, how could it be correct that people pay thousands of dollars on these courses and receive zero or near to zero benefit from them? If this were true no one would take the courses, the courses would be rated poorly, and the underlying business would fail. >Indeed, which means that people who's families have been carefully shepherding their education since they were much younger have an _insurmountable_ advantage in the GPA game. Sure, but the context is "which is easier to game." To game the GPA takes four years of study and prep and you must start doing it at the beginning of grade 9. Tens of thousands of dollars and preparation+work over multiple years. To game the SAT or ACT you must spend a few thousand dollars during grade 11 or grade 12.