Student Loan Blog : SAT

Report: High Scorers May Benefit Most From Standardized Test Preparation

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:35:00 GMT

Students who receive above-average scores on standardized college admissions tests, such as the SAT, may benefit the most from commercial test preparation services, according to new report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling, although the benefits of such test preparation may not outweigh the costs for many families (“Test Preparation May Help High Scorers Most, Report Says,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 20, 2009).

Research indicates that commercial test preparation services may raise students’ SAT scores by up to 30 points, however the score gains may not be directly attributable to the coaching alone, says author of the NACAC report Derek Briggs, associate professor of education at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

In his report, “Preparation for College Admission Exams,” Briggs suggests that students who don’t use test prep services may still be able to achieve the same range of score increases seen by those students who do use the services just by purchasing a test preparation handbook and taking a series of practice tests.

“If there are effects to be gained through preparation,” Briggs said, “can you get the same effect without spending the money? That’s a pertinent question in this economy.”

Does Test Prep Coaching Improve Admissions Chances?

Of all the colleges Briggs surveyed in his study, only one third said that in some cases an increase of 20 points on the math portion of the SAT or an increase of 10 points on the critical-reading section could “significantly improve” an applicant’s chance of being admitted. This was especially true, the report indicated, at highly selective colleges where applicant scores tend to fall within a narrow range.

“If you come from a wealthy family and have high scores to begin with and can spend $1,000, then test prep might be worth it for those 30 points,” Briggs said. “What’s unfortunate is if middle- class or poorer families think test prep is going to raise their scores by 300 points. If you’re a kid with scores between 400 to 500, I’m not sure it’s going to make any difference.”

Seppy Basili, a vice president at Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, is concerned what effect Brigg’s findings might have on test takers, especially black and Hispanic students who typically don’t score as high as white students on the SAT.

Basili said, “I wouldn’t want the message to minority students to be that you can’t benefit by preparing.”

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College Board Settles Inquiry into Its Student Loan Practices

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:40:00 GMT

The College Board, which administers the SAT, ACT, and AP college admissions tests, has agreed to resolve an investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal into its student loan practices.

As part of the settlement agreement, the College Board — which exited the student loan business last year — will allocate $675,000 to developing a set of tools, including calculators, that would help families and financial aid administrators across the country to compare student loan offers (“College Board Rapped for Student Loan Marketing,” North County Gazette, Dec. 8, 2008).

The tools will “help parents, students and educators with the college loan process” by identifying the lowest cost student loan options, said Jennifer Topiel, a spokeswoman for the College Board, in an emailed statement.

“Our investigation of the student lending industry revealed arrangements — concealed from students and families — between the College Board and financial-aid offices at several schools,” Blumenthal said in a statement December 8. “The College Board provided discounted equipment and services to the schools in exchange for a coveted spot on the schools’ preferred-lender lists.”

Cuomo characterized the College Board’s loan arrangement with colleges as deceitful, although he did say that the testing company, with “its national reach and extensive expertise in higher education,” was well-suited to help parents and students “borrow smartly” (“College Board Resolves Two State Student-Loan Probes,” Bloomberg.com, Dec. 8, 2008).

“Loans are hard enough to come by these days; the last thing we need are deceitful arrangements like this one that stand squarely in the way of students and parents getting the facts,” Cuomo said. “We should be doing absolutely everything we can to guide students to the least expensive, least complicated option for affording higher education.”

Code of Conduct Seeks to Protect Students

Should the College Board ever resume its college lending programs, it has said it will abide by the Attorney General’s Direct-to-Consumer Marketing Code of Conduct, which prohibits lenders and marketers of student loans from using deceptive marketing practices.

The code of conduct is the result of Cuomo’s investigations into the student loan industry that have uncovered widespread conflict of interest practices among colleges and student loan lenders. Colleges and financial aid officers received both payments and perks from lenders in exchange for placement on schools’ preferred lender lists.

Cuomo spokeswoman Emily Browne said that 22 lenders and 26 institutions have pledged to sever financial ties and abide by a code of conduct that prohibits accepting gifts or payments from lenders.

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Princeton Review Exposes Thousands of Students’ Personal Info

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:24:00 GMT

For nearly two months, thousands of the The Princeton Review’s private files including folders containing the company’s and test-takers’ personal data were unintentionally made accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, according to an article in The New York Times (“Student Files Are Exposed on Web Site,” Aug. 18, 2008).

Digital files containing student identification information, test-preparation materials, and internal communication documents, which should have been password protected, have been listed on an easy-to-find, publically viewable webpage ever since the test-preparatory firm switched Internet service providers in late June.

The error was discovered by a rival company while it was conducting competitive research on The Princeton Review. The rival company, which asked not to be named, provided the Times with the Web address containing the files. The Princeton Review promptly shut off access to the exposed private data on its website after the newspaper informed it of the error on Monday. It is not known how many people may have accessed the files.

Security Error Blamed On Company’s Faulty Internet Protection Practices

One of the files listed the identification information of about 34,000 Florida elementary school students, including their birthdays, ethnicities, and whether they had learning disabilities. The school system had hired The Princeton Review to build an online tool that would measure students’ academic progress.

Another 74,000 students in a Virginia school system — which had also contracted with The Princeton Review to measure and improve student performance — had their names and birth dates exposed.

The test-preparatory company’s own educational materials for the LSAT, PSAT and SAT exams, as well as its course schedules, internal instructor evaluations, and the entire texts of some of its study books like “Cracking the LSAT” were also open to the public. Another folder on the site contained digital scans of eight official SAT and PSAT exams from 2005 to 2007 that included accompanying files explaining how The Princeton Review uses older exams to create practice tests.

Mike Haro, an analyst for Sophos, an Internet security firm, says the security mishap is an indication that The Princeton Review was not following “accepted” Internet-security protocol by keeping confidential files and innocuous files on the same computers. “In this case it would have made sense for the company to separate information such as names of the students from their test scores and whatever confidential information the company had,” Haro said. “But we are finding that companies today don’t change until they experience the pain of a data breach that is exposed to the public.

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Concerned About College Costs, Texas Board Considers Changes to State Financial Aid

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:13:00 GMT

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is considering restructuring the state’s financial aid programs amid growing concerns about college affordability.

Proposed changes would raise the academic standards students must meet to qualify for the Texas Grant program, which helps low-income students pay for college, and would merge two of the state’s lesser-known financial aid programs with the Texas Grant. The board would also consider raising the income level at which students qualify for the Texas Grant, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle (“Financial Aid Fix Raises Concerns About Poorer Students,” July 21, 2008).

The Texas Grant program currently serves students who come from families that earn $39,000 a year or less and who have completed the recommended high school curriculum for Texas students, which includes four years of English, math, and science.

Changes Could Negatively Impact Low-Income Students

Some legislators are concerned that if enacted, the proposed changes would benefit middle-income students and widen the financial aid gap for low-income students. They also say raising the academic criteria for students who hope to qualify for a Texas Grant — requiring students to earn a 1350 on the SAT or an 18 on the ACT — would be detrimental to the most financially needy students who the grant program is designed to help.

“The changes will effectively cut off many of these students,” said Max Castillo, president of the University of Houston’s downtown campus.

Even under the current criteria, only about half of the students who qualify for the Texas Grant program receive a grant because there isn’t enough money, says state Senator Rodney Ellis, one of the original sponsors of the Texas Grant. Texas ranks last in per-capita spending for college grants among the 10 most populous states, according to the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs.

If approved by the education board, the new merit criteria would apply for students entering high school in fall 2009.

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Students Who Cheat on ACT, SAT Exams Face Few Consequences

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:31:00 GMT

Students at a Los Angeles area high school are suspected of paying a former student to take the ACT college entrance exam in their place.

The alleged cheaters will likely have their scores invalidated, but the colleges and universities that received the students’ scores may never know why, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times (“Cheating on ACT, SAT College Entrance Exams Has Few Consequences,” July 14, 2008).

While students who are caught cheating in college may face probation or be expelled, students who cheat on one a college entrance exam get a second shot at a higher score. And neither the college nor the student’s high school are alerted about the student’s dishonest behavior.

“We don’t tell schools or anyone else; we simply cancel the score,” said ACT spokesman Ed Colby. “What we’re trying to do is make sure the scores that we send to colleges are valid. It’s not our intention to go around punishing students who make mistakes or who’ve done something they shouldn’t have.”

Cheating Policies Don’t Encourage Ethical Conduct

Critics contend that the ACT’s policy to keep testing irregularities confidential — a policy that is also held by the SAT — sends a message that cheating on the test is OK and has few consequences.

“What they’re basically saying is ‘Try it. You have nothing to lose,’ ” said Michael Josephson, president of the Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute of Ethics. “Why not say to someone who robbed a 7-Eleven, ‘Please give back the merchandise or pay for it, but we don’t want you to feel bad about stealing.’ ”

Josephson argues that the ACT and the SAT cheating policies are too lax and firmer consequences need to be put in place.

Tom Ewing, spokesman for the Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT, said that prohibiting a student suspected of cheating from re-taking the test could hinder that student’s educational future — a move he said “seems a bit extreme.”

The two companies have found that cheating on the tests is relatively rare and prompts only about 2,000 investigations on average out of the more than 3 million tests administered each year. Most accusations of cheating are made by students or exam proctors and typically involve a student copying from another’s exam.

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New SAT Test Fails to Show Improvements, College Board Finds

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:09:00 GMT

Despite dramatic changes to the SAT that were designed to help colleges and universities better predict a student’s academic performance in college, the adjustments did not “substantially change” how accurately the test predicts first-year grades, according to data collected by the College Board, the nonprofit organization that administers the test.

Validity studies conducted by the board showed that the changes to the test, which included updated mathematics questions and the addition of a writing section, did show that more emphasis has been placed on writing instruction in the classroom, but didn’t do much to bolster the overall reliability of the test, wrote Inside Higher Ed reporter Scott Jaschik ("The New SAT: Longer, But No Better?," June 18, 2008).

The studies, Jaschik wrote, also support the findings of research conducted on the previous version of the SAT, that the single best way to predict a high school student’s performance during their freshman year of college is their high school grades, not a standardized test.

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College Board Helps College Recruiters Target Low-Income Students

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:38:00 GMT

As part of a College Board pilot program nearly 30 colleges and universities will be allowed to buy the names and personal information of low-income high school students — a data set that has been off limits since the early 1980s, according to the Chicago Tribune (“Colleges Recruit Low-Income Students,” May 24, 2008).

The College Board currently sells data to colleges that it collects from the SAT and other College Board–administered exams, including high school students’ grades, test scores, race, religion, and other demographic information. The nonprofit college membership association stopped offering family income data nearly 20 years ago after it found that some schools had misused that information to target admissions offers to students who could afford full tuition.

But in response to lobbying by colleges and universities that are “trying to bring more economic diversity to their overwhelmingly affluent student bodies,” the College Board is now making the income data partially available again, writes Chicago Tribune reporter Jodi Cohen.

“We are using it for good, not for evil,” said Bruce Poch, dean of admissions at Pomona College. “The myth of unaffordability has become a nightmare, and we can’t directly speak to kids or their families unless we can really target them.”

To ensure that students’ privacy isn’t violated and that the information isn’t misused, schools cannot request a search that would reveal which students have family incomes above or below a certain level. College admissions officers can only request the names of students who live in low-income communities, determined by their high school and nine-digit ZIP code.

While the College Board will not disclose the names of colleges currently participating in its expanded pilot program, Amherst College, Williams College, and Wellesley College were three of the schools that tested the system last year. Amherst Dean of Admissions Tom Parker said 1,000 more low-income students received direct mail from Amherst after using the program.

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Your Video iPod: It Plays Music, It Plays TV and Now It Preps You for Your SATs

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 23:35:00 GMT

Thick books full of practice tests. Books with vocabulary lists. Books offering tips for word problems, reading comprehension and timed essays. Special tutors, rigorous training sessions, and now—the iPod.

As high schoolers gear up for SAT season in the fall, their indispensable iPod has just become an on-the-go way for them to prep for their SATs.

Kaplan Test Prep Comes to an iPod Near You

As reported by Maria Aspan in The New York Times, Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, known for their test preparation services and publications, released three interactive SAT prep programs for sale on iTunes (“Prepare for the SAT Test, or Play With Your iPod? Have It Both Ways,” June 25, 2007). Available as of June 21, the programs can be downloaded for $4.99 each from the iPod games section of the Apple iTunes store. The programs need to be downloaded to a video iPod (the fifth generation iPod) to work; they can’t be used within iTunes itself.

The three prep programs—in critical reading, math and writing—correspond to the three graded sections of the SAT and include about 1,000 practice questions, along with pointers and strategies like “SAT Math Basics” and “Top 10 Test-Taking Tips.” According to Kaplan’s press release, the reading program features quizzes in sentence completion and reading comprehension, the math program tests you on algebra, geometry, word problems and other math questions, and the writing module aims to help build up your writing skills with activities geared toward improving sentences and paragraphs and identifying common errors. Each download also includes explanations on the exam structure.

Your SAT Books Can’t Do This

The Kaplan programs are interactive, so they’re designed to talk back to you and let you set certain parameters. In each program, you’ll get feedback and a detailed analysis of each quiz you complete. You also have the option to take the quizzes timed or untimed, with or without music, and you can track your quiz score progress with charts and graphs that identify key strengths and weaknesses.

But as Aspan notes, the Kaplan iTunes downloads are meant as supplements, not replacements, for your other SAT prep regimens. Kaplan doesn’t expect high school students “to entirely forsake their books and tutors in favor of playing with their iPods on the beach or taking digital quizzes during coffee breaks on the summer job.” According to Aspan’s article, Kristen Campbell, the national director of SAT and ACT programs for Kaplan, recommends that you still prepare with “traditional” classroom and tutoring methods as well, and she offers this reminder: “Keep in mind that the SAT is a pencil-and-paper-based test.”

The Education Finance Advisors at NextStudent can help you figure in all your college expenses so that you get the student loan that best suits your needs. Don’t get caught short. Go to www.nextstudent.com for all your student loan needs.

Check back here next Friday for my next blog on Campus Life.

Student Loan Girl

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