Average SAT scores by school district and high school

[nonexpat]

Originally Posted by Austin97

I would be interested to see the stats on this. Im skeptical that on average there is significant improvement. Here is an article on the subject. Im not saying some students who are atrocious test takers couldn't get dramatic improvement by learning how to remain calm during the test, but on average smart or dumb students arent going to see much improvement.

SAT Coaching Found to Boost Scores -- Barely - WSJ.com

I got a 1210 the first time I took it (80's) which was good enough for me to get into my target school. My dad said that it didnt really matter what I got if I took it again since the 1210 was good enough and I got a 1390 the second time just because I didnt have all the pressure. Part of what the training classes are good for is so the kids know what to expect so they are a lot calmer.

I can only tell you what happened at the SAT prep school where I taught. There was a huge improvement. No doubt being calmer helps, but we taught very specific strategies and focused on vocabulary acquistion as well. The verbal SAT is all about vocabulary knowledge. The SAT from the 80's is very different from today's by the way. Using the strategies we taught, cut my test taking time in half. Unlike the ACT, the SAT punishes students for incorrect vs. skipped test questions. We also taught a very specific skipping strategy which improves scores--especially average to lower scores. Once students get near the national merit finalist scores they can't skip anything. Our school regularly had 10-20 National Merit Finalists who had taken our SAT prep course. What does that say about the SAT? It says that it doesn't measure raw talent, if people can improve their scores in this way.