{"id":414,"date":"2017-04-19T07:00:20","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T15:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/?p=414"},"modified":"2017-04-19T09:11:58","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T17:11:58","slug":"what-kaplan-and-princeton-review-dont-want-you-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/what-kaplan-and-princeton-review-dont-want-you-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"What Kaplan and Princeton Review Don’t Want You to Know About the SAT"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent article in the New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0recommended that students from low-income backgrounds should prepare for the SAT (Scholastic Achievement Test) “like a rich kid” by spending hundreds of hours studying test prep books, visiting tutors, and taking online cram courses.<\/p>\n

This is very poor advice, whether you are rich or not.<\/p>\n

Most studies find that test preparation for the SAT produces very<\/em> small<\/em> effects on average – a few dozen points, at best. Claims\u00a0that you can\u00a0boost your score by hundreds of points have never been confirmed\u00a0in experimental\u00a0studies.<\/p>\n

Becker (1990)<\/a>, for example, analyzed several dozen studies and found that the average point gain in carefully controlled studies was somewhere between nine\u00a0and 20 points. These are tiny gains that are\u00a0of no practical importance in\u00a0college admission decisions.\u00a0Other reviews have come to similar conclusions (see a brief summary in Liu (2014)<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In addition to being useless,\u00a0SAT\u00a0test\u00a0prep can\u00a0also be very expensive. The prices for\u00a0two\u00a0well-known test prep courses as of April, 2017, were $1,599 (Kaplan) and $1,099 (Princeton Review). Private tutoring would\u00a0easily cost much more.<\/p>\n

A much better strategy for students, one that costs $0.00, is the following:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Go to the public or school library.<\/li>\n
  2. Check out books on topics you are interested in and enjoy.<\/li>\n
  3. Read those books for as many hours a day as you can.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Unlike test prep courses, extensive self-selected (pleasure) reading is associated with higher literacy levels and<\/em>\u00a0higher test scores<\/a>\u00a0(Acheson, Wells, & MacDonald, 2008). Both correlational and experimental studies have found that reading improves not only vocabulary and\u00a0reading comprehension, but also writing, spelling, grammar, and knowledge of the world (Krashen, 2004<\/a>) – all things that will have a\u00a0significant impact on SAT\u00a0scores.<\/p>\n

    What’s more, the newly revised SAT is even more “reading-dependent<\/a>” than the previous versions, making a strategy of voluminous\u00a0reading\u00a0a better option than ever.<\/p>\n

    Instead of spending four hours a day, five days a week\u00a0in a 10-week\u00a0summer test prep program, high school students would be better advised to\u00a0dedicate that time to reading.* Such a plan would allow students to read about\u00a02.5\u00a0million words, which is probably enough to raise even a good high school reader’s\u00a0vocabulary by a 1,000 words or more\u00a0(Nation, 2014; McQuillan, 2016<\/a>).<\/p>\n

    For struggling adolescent readers, including those from low-income families without the benefits typically provided “rich kids,” the impact would likely be even more dramatic.<\/p>\n

    Our advice to students should be simple: Read more, prep less.*<\/p>\n

    *If \u00a0you\u00a0really want to spend $1,000 on test prep for your\u00a0children, I suggest buying them\u00a0one hundred\u00a0$10 paperbacks. After they\u00a0finish reading them, donate the books\u00a0to a public or school library in a low-income neighborhood. Now you’ve helped your children and hundreds of other kids as well.<\/p>\n

    References<\/em><\/p>\n

    Acheson, D., Wells, J., & MacDonald, M. (2008). New and updated tests of print exposure and reading abilities in college students.\u00a0Behavioral Research Methods, 4<\/em>0(1): 278\u2013289.<\/a><\/p>\n

    Becker, B.J. (1990). Coaching for the Scholastic Aptitude Test: Further Synthesis and Appraisal. Review of Educational Research, 60<\/em>(3), 373-417.<\/p>\n

    Krashen, S. (2004). The Power of Reading<\/em>, 2nd ed. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.<\/p>\n

    Liu, O. L. (2014), Investigating the Relationship Between Test Preparation and TOEFL iBT<\/i>\u00ae<\/sup> Performance. ETS Research Report Series<\/em>, 2014<\/em>(2),\u00a01\u201313.<\/a><\/p>\n

    McQuillan, J. (1996). SAT Verbal scores and the library: Predicting high school reading achievement in the United States. Indiana Media Journal, 18<\/em>(3), 66-70.<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
    Note: It’s not surprising that states that have the best school and public library systems also tend to have the better\u00a0SAT scores, controlling for other types of school spending (McQuillan, 1996<\/a>).<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A recent article in the New York Times\u00a0recommended that students from low-income backgrounds should prepare for the SAT (Scholastic Achievement Test) “like a rich kid” by spending hundreds of hours studying test prep books, visiting tutors, and taking online cram courses. This is very poor advice, whether you are rich or not. Most studies find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}