Comment by ceejayoz
2 hours ago
> Preparing for the SAT requires a book and an internet connection.
Sports frequently just requires a ball or a place to run.
In both scenarios, you can still purchase better equipment/training. There are very expensive, effective SAT prep options out there for the wealthy.
My kids were able to take some SAT test prep course through their school (partially funded by the PTA) and it helped a lot. They wrote a bunch of practice exams and each time their scores went up. Also, test taking itself is a skill and the more you practice it the better you get at it. If you’ve written the SAT 15 times over the past 2 years, then the 16th time won’t be as stressful and you will know strategies that work and the questions will be familiar.
If you are in a school that doesn’t have a well funded PTA, you are at a disadvantage.
You can, as of about a year ago, take official SAT practice exams for free in Google Gemini.
SAT prep is much more than just taking practice exams.
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Sports is the most expensive way to get into college. Tennis is close to $1 million to get your kid into an Ivy league through tennis. Malcom Gladwell wrote about sports and colleges in his book "revenge of the tipping point". Sports is used by the wealthy to get their less academically inclined children in to top schools and some school are expanding it.
Your analogy works against you, given that tons of professional athletes come from poverty.
Professional athletes are like people who get 1600s on the SAT; a bit of an outlier.
That's exactly the point. Top schools are looking for outlier intellectual talent, but the egalitarian approach (high school grade inflation plus weakening of standardized testing) smooths the differences and makes it harder for them to admit the right people.
The visible result has been the weakening of these institutions. Do also observe that this is recursive — as these institutions have lowered their standards over decades, the people who go through them and end up leading them are weaker, too.
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> tons of professional athletes come from poverty
Is that actually the case?
Depends on the sport. I don’t think the Olympic equestrian competitors would be dirt poor.
Read up on Kobe Bryant or Bronny James.
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According to IA this is mostly a myth though.
Whatever gates you put up, the wealthy can fire cannons of cash at them. You just have to pick the ones least vulnerable to cash barrages.
What is the marginal gain of expensive SAT prep? Versus just doing hundreds of mock tests out of some prep book, like SWEs grinding LeetCode?
It feels like the problem are the SAT prep courses' existence then