[Hermitian909]

I'm a former educator and tutor.

The effects of studying "for the test" as you put have been measured, improved test taking skills tends to be worth ~30 points which is not that significant. This matches my anecdotal experience and that of people I know who run SAT prep courses.

It's far more effective to actually teach students the material, either by teaching them new concepts or by firming up their understanding to ones they've already been exposed to. Particularly in Math, many students in high school have shaky understandings of fractions or algebra. Firming up these foundations can often lead to >100 point increase (given sufficient lead time). Those foundations are something the test is actually looking for since numeracy and strong algebra skills are a strong predictor of success in Calculus.

It's true that tutoring grants unfair advantages but this is going to be true in any system that uses skills as part of a selection criteria.

[bsder]

> The effects of studying "for the test" as you put have been measured, improved test taking skills tends to be worth ~30 points which is not that significant. This matches my anecdotal experience and that of people I know who run SAT prep courses.

I see this often but I suspect that it is lumping "Took a prep class for 1 hour on a Saturday" and "Spent 6 hours a week for 52 weeks with a tutor" in the same category.

Any tutor who only gets a 30 point increase won't be seeing much business among the folks I know.

However, I do agree with you that firming up skills is a remarkably quick way to get a significant boost. Being able to add 2 + 2 and come up with 4, repeatedly and accurately is often a big deal on these tests even with a calculator.

[derbOac]

I'm familiar with that 30 point differential because it shows up in research.

You're right that 30 points isn't that much if you're thinking about the whole distribution, but I guarantee it can be significant around the selection threshold. That threshold might be implicit or explicit, but it's there, and if it's enough to nudge applicants past it, it's significant.

[Hermitian909]

Sure, but having read a large chunk of educational literature I'm not aware of any alternatives with fewer distortions from parental aid. Grades correlate more highly with a good home life than test scores do, for example.

As long as we have "prestige" universities there's going to be some form of skills testing, and no one has ever designed an un-gameable test that can be administered nationally. The question we have to ask ourselves then is how we can reduce game-ability and I doubt we can make improvements that are more than incremental.

[lordnacho]

Would you have some papers I could google, or some keywords to get me started? I'm quite interested in reading those studies.