How much time do people actually spend on this training? I am dead certain that the bulk of the time is spent on actually learning the material and not on gamin

How much time do people actually spend on this training? I am dead certain that the bulk of the time is spent on actually learning the material and not on gaming the test. This is because there are only so many tricks you can learn, and you can learn them all in a week. > (the training that costs money, but is fundamentally necessary if you want to get into a good school This is objectively false. Source: I went to multiple good schools and met a boatload of people who also got in without said training. Also, that test-taking training is an overhyped and overpriced collection of cheap common sense strategies. You can learn how to do well on a multiple choice test in 20 seconds. You always pick the most likely answer. Strategies specific to things like the SATs boil down to memorizing vocab and doing a hundred practice tests. You can do this for a hundred bucks by buying a couple test prep books over Amazon. The part of the test-taking training that costs thousands of dollars is where they get a teacher with a fancy degree to babysit unmotivated children into actually doing the work. > Moreover standardized tests in the US explicitly encourage that behaviour by being ridiculously time constrained, to the extent that if you do not get training in how to quickly answer questions, no amount of understanding the material matters. There is actual academic research studying this, and shockingly understanding correlates strongly with being able to quickly answer questions. It's unfortunate that we can't assess millions of children by having them take time-unconstrained oral exams or projects, but the effect of training is grossly overstated. Show me any intervention (other than actually learning the material) that boosts your SAT score by more than ~30 points.