3 ms·

I honestly don't think that 'cram schools' are particularly effective. I taught for the Princeton Review for a while ($20+/hr when I was 18 sounded pretty good)

by smanek 18y ago

I honestly don't think that 'cram schools' are particularly effective. I taught for the Princeton Review for a while ($20+/hr when I was 18 sounded pretty good). In my experience, the average student would only gain about an extra 50 points the SAT (relative to what they would have gained studying on their own). If memory serves, a standard deviation (on the old 1600 point test) was usually in the neighborhood of a 110 points. Increasing your score by less than half a standard deviation was nice, but it rarely made or broke your college application.

rsheridan6 18y ago
Applications to top schools are extremely competitive; I could easily see 50 SAT points making or breaking an application. I was under the impression that these days your application has to be more or less perfect to even have a chance to get into an Ivy League school, unless you're a legacy or a URM.
- nostrademons 18y ago
  Amherst isn't quite Ivy League, but I had a bunch of friends there with SATs in the 1400s, or even the high 1300s. I believe the median (from stats, not from friends) is about 1460. It was fairly scary how many of my friends had 1590s or 1600s, though.
apu 18y ago
In India they seem to make a huge difference. Friends and relatives who went to "IIT Preparation Courses" (6-12 months, at a boarding school, for getting into one of the IITs, the top technical colleges in the country) usually did vastly superior to others (of similar ability) who did not.
Dilpil 18y ago
But then again, how many of those students would have studied alone if not for the class?
tokenadult 18y ago
On the one hand, high SAT scores are still rather scarce, http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/413821-sat-score-frequencies-freshman-class-sizes.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/41382... but on the other hand, any one applicant with perfect SAT scores can still be rejected by plenty of colleges. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/377882-how-do-top-scorers-tests-fail-gain-admission-top-schools.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/377882-how... Agreed with the point that on a dollar-per-SAT-point basis, there is little rationale for choosing commercial SAT preparation over simply self-studying with the released previous exams. The most decisive thing to do to raise SAT scores is to read widely and avidly in English.

by smanek 18y ago

rsheridan6 18y ago

Applications to top schools are extremely competitive; I could easily see 50 SAT points making or breaking an application. I was under the impression that these days your application has to be more or less perfect to even have a chance to get into an Ivy League school, unless you're a legacy or a URM.

nostrademons 18y ago
Amherst isn't quite Ivy League, but I had a bunch of friends there with SATs in the 1400s, or even the high 1300s. I believe the median (from stats, not from friends) is about 1460. It was fairly scary how many of my friends had 1590s or 1600s, though.

apu 18y ago

In India they seem to make a huge difference. Friends and relatives who went to "IIT Preparation Courses" (6-12 months, at a boarding school, for getting into one of the IITs, the top technical colleges in the country) usually did vastly superior to others (of similar ability) who did not.

Dilpil 18y ago

But then again, how many of those students would have studied alone if not for the class?

tokenadult 18y ago

On the one hand, high SAT scores are still rather scarce, http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/413821-sat-score-frequencies-freshman-class-sizes.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/41382... but on the other hand, any one applicant with perfect SAT scores can still be rejected by plenty of colleges. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/377882-how-do-top-scorers-tests-fail-gain-admission-top-schools.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/377882-how... Agreed with the point that on a dollar-per-SAT-point basis, there is little rationale for choosing commercial SAT preparation over simply self-studying with the released previous exams. The most decisive thing to do to raise SAT scores is to read widely and avidly in English.