You know test prep courses are a thing, and that the wealthy are the primary consumers of them, right? Pretty much everything in the USA is pay to win.
Test prep companies have an incentive to overhype their services but research suggests the improvement isn't that much.
There's a Jacobin article making the case for the SAT that people following this debate might enjoy reading: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/03/sat-class-race-inequality...
Spending 10k on a prep class isn't going to cause your dimwitted child to outperform a bright kid from a disadvantaged background, but it can probably buy a better essay
Richer families were more likely to have connections with a doctor to give the diagnosis, afford the insurance deductible, or even be in the right circles or to know through word of mouth or paid admissions advisers that it was a thing to try and acquire for the kid.
Again, you should expect every metric to be thoroughly gamed.
Well, no, since that would be 150% of the maximum score.
You can buy your way to the maximum score, and people have been doing it, but test prep won't get you there. (As you note, prep is worth nearly nothing in terms of score gains.) You need advance access to the answers, or a substitute to take the test for you, or something along those lines.
Sure, yes, maybe bribery or fraud could get you there. Have there been reported cases?
Yes, there have been various reported cases of fraud on the SAT. The most prominent two that come to mind are the recent college admissions scandal, in which strategies included both (1) having a substitute take the SAT in place of the student and (2) bribing the test proctor, and the year in which every test result from South Korea was canceled due to widespread cheating.
https://world.time.com/2013/05/10/for-the-first-time-sat-tes...
Even so:
> In any case, even small effects can be unfair. Let’s assume the effects of short-term coaching are really just a 20- or 30-point jump in students’ scores. That means they ought to be irrelevant to college admissions officers. Briggs found otherwise, however. Analyzing a 2008 survey conducted by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, he noted that one-third of respondents described a jump from 750 to 770 on the math portion of the SAT as having a significant effect on a student’s chances of admissions, and this was true among counselors at more and less selective schools alike. Even a minor score improvement for a high-achieving student, then—and one that falls within the standard measurement error for the test—can make a real difference.
https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-the...
Test prep, even if it's as rudimentary as taking the test multiple times (thus, being able to afford to take the test multiple times), is an advantage that matters.
In extremely competitive situations, the slightest edge matter. Arguably test prep is less of an edge than spending a summer on some community project would be but even a relatively small point jump is an edge for someone on the bubble. And, of course, elite schools have become hyper-competitive. I have very few illusions that I would have the school choice I had when I went to college--especially given that that about an eighth of my class went to the school in question.
The SAT is the one mechanism that poor asian and jewish and nigerian kids could prepare for and do well on. But obviously the objective is to get rid of them as "theres too many"
Its also the only measure thats the same for everyone. There also isnt any indication that as a whole the test prep classes actually "work" to a serious degree. Maybe theyll take your score up 20 points but wont raise it 300.