(Language) by Jeff McQuillan.
A recent article in the New York Times (Hernandez, 2017) recommended that students from low-income backgrounds 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 one is rich or not.
Most studies find that test preparation for the SAT produces very small effects on average—a few dozen points, at best. Claims that one can boost one’s score by hundreds of points have never been confirmed in experimental studies. Becker (1990), for example…
