SAT tutors offer scant help, study finds

From today's Record...as the parent of someone whose SAT scores went DOWN after doing a weekly Kaplan test prep course, this does not surprise me!

BY KATHLEEN CARROLL
NorthJersey.com

Recession-minded families wondering if they should ditch that $100-an-hour SAT tutor got a murky answer this week from the National Association of College Admissions Counselors.

Coaching and prep classes for college-admissions exams are helpful, but don’t usually change students’ scores all that much. But any increase could be significant because some colleges use very small score differences to choose between similar candidates for admission, an NACAC report said.

Some test-prep providers promise score gains of up to 100 points on the SAT, but students usually gain about 30 points, according to the report. On the math section of the exam, average gains are between 10 and 20 points; on the reading section, students gain an average of 5-10 points after being coached, the report said.

Short-term preparation classes result in "very, very small gains," said Laurence Bunin, general manager of the SAT and senior vice president for operations at the College Board, which developed and administers the test.

"The test is testing what you learned in school, so unless students are learning more material, they are not going to do a lot better," he said. "There’s no trick. Tricks don’t work."

Recession-minded families wondering if they should ditch that $100-an-hour SAT tutor got a murky answer this week from the National Association of College Admissions Counselors.

Coaching and prep classes for college-admissions exams are helpful, but don’t usually change students’ scores all that much. But any increase could be significant because some colleges use very small score differences to choose between similar candidates for admission, an NACAC report said.

Some test-prep providers promise score gains of up to 100 points on the SAT, but students usually gain about 30 points, according to the report. On the math section of the exam, average gains are between 10 and 20 points; on the reading section, students gain an average of 5-10 points after being coached, the report said.

Short-term preparation classes result in "very, very small gains," said Laurence Bunin, general manager of the SAT and senior vice president for operations at the College Board, which developed and administers the test.

"The test is testing what you learned in school, so unless students are learning more material, they are not going to do a lot better," he said. "There’s no trick. Tricks don’t work."