The Big Tests: Is the SAT Coachable?

Buy this book »

For most of its existence as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the test was promoted as a test of a student’s supposedly native or innate ability to think and reason critically, which could not be coached (hence the term aptitude). Students registering for the SAT received a booklet describing the test along with some sample questions, but no more. Test questions were guarded jealously, both before and after a test. Until 1957, in fact, students did not even receive their scores directly. Results went first to high school counselors who then used the information to guide students toward appropriate colleges.

But some believed that the SAT was coachable. While still in high school in Brooklyn in the 1940s, a young man named Stanley H. Kaplan began tutoring friends to prepare them for the test. Word of his effectiveness spread, and he eventually built a thriving business in the 1960s and 1970s doing what the College Board insisted wasn’t possible. Years later, he sold that business to the Washington Post–Newsweek group for $50 million. It still operates under Kaplan’s name.

A turning point came in 1987 when New York State passed a truth-in-testing law that required the College Board to make available old exam questions with answers. Up to that time, coaching businesses like Kaplan’s relied on exams that mimicked the SAT. With the new law, they gained access to the real thing. Soon after, the College Board itself began to refer to the test as “teachable” and to sell test preparation materials itself. This is now a sizable source of income for the organization, and the whole test prep industry is a billion-dollar enterprise.

How Much Does the SAT Count?

“OK,” you say. “This little bit of history is interesting, but what does it mean for me? Just how important is the SAT, and how should I approach it?” As David Erdmann says, “At most institutions, standardized test scores count less than students think and more than colleges are willing to admit.”  At many selective colleges, SAT scores count significantly in the evaluation of a student’s academic strengths—but less than GPA, class rank (if available, which is increasingly rare), and the rigor of the student’s coursework. Admissions officers also know that demographic and economic factors affect a student’s SAT scores, and they try to evaluate scores relative to a student’s opportunities and life circumstances. For example, parental education and income correlate strongly with scores (more education and higher income are associated with higher scores), so admissions officers expect to see higher scores from the prep school—educated child of two professionals than from the inner city—educated child of working-class immigrants.

Colleges now usually report scores for the middle 50 percent of their class rather than as averages. This is how you will see them in the “big books” like Fiske and in the U.S. News rankings. In general, the more selective a college, the higher the scores of students falling in the middle 50 percent of the freshman class. College A, for example, may report that the middle 50 percent had SAT math scores ranging from 550 to 650. This means that 25 percent of freshmen had a math SAT score below 550, 25 percent had a score of 660 or above, and the remaining 50 percent had scores in between. College B may report that the middle 50 percent of its freshman class had SAT math scores of 660 to 760. Comparing the two sets of numbers, 75 percent of the freshmen at College B had a math score of 660 or above, while only 25 percent of the students at College A reached that level. A 550 would place you right at the 25th percentile for College A, but at a much lower percentile at College B.