You know test prep courses are a thing, and that the wealthy are the primary consumers of them, right? Pretty much everything in the USA is pay to win.
You're being downvoted, but I think this sentiment is right and if you take it seriously, it's an argument for the SAT. Pretty much _everything_ in the USA is pay to win, not just the SAT, and the more subjective factors like essays, extracurriculars, and even grades, are more biased.
Test prep companies have an incentive to overhype their services but research suggests the improvement isn't that much.
Test prep has a more or less negligible effect size. Extra curriculars and paying someone to write your essay for you on the other hand are all about privilege.
Spending 10k on a prep class isn't going to cause your dimwitted child to outperform a bright kid from a disadvantaged background, but it can probably buy a better essay
At least in the past, Harvard had a far higher rate of students with learning disabilities than lower tier schools, because having one meant you could get unlimited time on the SAT (giving the time to, on the math part, test every multiple choice solution manually rather than solve once and choose or use other higher level strategies).
Richer families were more likely to have connections with a doctor to give the diagnosis, afford the insurance deductible, or even be in the right circles or to know through word of mouth or paid admissions advisers that it was a thing to try and acquire for the kid.
This is an oft-repeated meme, but I don't think it holds much water - the main value of SAT test prep is in taking a few practice tests, which you can do by yourself with a $20 book. You can't buy your way to a 2400, it takes being able to actually solve the problems. Otherwise, you'd see a lot more of them.
Well, no, since that would be 150% of the maximum score.
You can buy your way to the maximum score, and people have been doing it, but test prep won't get you there. (As you note, prep is worth nearly nothing in terms of score gains.) You need advance access to the answers, or a substitute to take the test for you, or something along those lines.
Yes, there have been various reported cases of fraud on the SAT. The most prominent two that come to mind are the recent college admissions scandal, in which strategies included both (1) having a substitute take the SAT in place of the student and (2) bribing the test proctor, and the year in which every test result from South Korea was canceled due to widespread cheating.
Yes, everything. But testing is the least gameable (assuming you can prevent actual cheating). So getting rid of it makes admission more gameable overall.
At least the wealthy still have to take the test. With essays, there is no guarantee that the person wrote it. There are numerous websites for purchasing essays
I think I know when I'm being disingenuous, thank you very much, and that was not it. Mistaken, perhaps, but not disingenuous.
Even so:
> In any case, even small effects can be unfair. Let’s assume the effects of short-term coaching are really just a 20- or 30-point jump in students’ scores. That means they ought to be irrelevant to college admissions officers. Briggs found otherwise, however. Analyzing a 2008 survey conducted by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, he noted that one-third of respondents described a jump from 750 to 770 on the math portion of the SAT as having a significant effect on a student’s chances of admissions, and this was true among counselors at more and less selective schools alike. Even a minor score improvement for a high-achieving student, then—and one that falls within the standard measurement error for the test—can make a real difference.
Test prep, even if it's as rudimentary as taking the test multiple times (thus, being able to afford to take the test multiple times), is an advantage that matters.
In extremely competitive situations, the slightest edge matter. Arguably test prep is less of an edge than spending a summer on some community project would be but even a relatively small point jump is an edge for someone on the bubble. And, of course, elite schools have become hyper-competitive. I have very few illusions that I would have the school choice I had when I went to college--especially given that that about an eighth of my class went to the school in question.
The real problem [edit: with scores] here is that scores are reported on a 200-800 scale. If they were reported in terms of standard deviation from the mean, then those 20-40 point differences wouldn't matter to admissions officers. As it is, a 30 point difference looks significant, even though it's only around 0.15 SD.
I'd hope that admissions officers are sophisticated enough to know that. Having said, there's some band in which you're basically flipping coins given overall criteria so you flip coins based on statistically insignificant numbers rather than complete random number generators.
you know they also pay people to write their essays or give them tutoring to get a high GPA right? And that GPA's are inflated at private schools?
The SAT is the one mechanism that poor asian and jewish and nigerian kids could prepare for and do well on. But obviously the objective is to get rid of them as "theres too many"
Its also the only measure thats the same for everyone. There also isnt any indication that as a whole the test prep classes actually "work" to a serious degree. Maybe theyll take your score up 20 points but wont raise it 300.
