Word: preps
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...centers stress non-violence and run weekly workshops on topics from drug and violence prevention to SAT prep courses and basketball games, Scott says...
Your article "Test Prep Courses Stress, Cost Students" (Feature, April 7) explored an unrepresentative range of Harvard experiences. The article correctly supports the assertion by Nicholas B. Lemann '76 that test prep courses traditionally promote meritocracy. However, there are also exceptions to this tradition. Not all companies use a few rare financial aid offerings covertly. Less privileged students also have the option of using courses that seek them out. Some options, such as my $350 TestWell LSAT course, charge everyone based on financial need and allow for free repeats. Your article fails to mention that students can make more moderate...
Also, most students do not invest extraordinary time in test prep courses simply because "everybody else is doing it." This competitive impulse contradicts the experience of most students I know, who have various backgrounds and legitimate needs to raise their scores--whether they are smart Harvard overachievers or not. Test prep does not merely defray anxiety for anxious over-achievers, as suggested, but often aptly levels the playing field for students who benefit, without emptying their wallets or hindering personal strategies...
...observations and my conversations with teachers at my high school, the MCAS-tainted schools will merely succeed in sending students who are capable of doing nothing more than answering MCAS questions out into the real word. Essentially all Massachusetts high schools will sink to the level of an SAT prep course...
...ironically, Lemann says no study has ever proved conclusively that test prep courses actually improve applicants' scores...