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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

What I find very odd about this is the assumption that kids in challenging circumstances would have more problem with test prep than with keeping up their GPA. Poor people can afford test prep. Stuyvesant, NYC’s selective admission high school, has 50% of students living in poverty, and a 1300+ average SAT score. A couple of thousand dollars one time is something most Americans can scrape together.

Gaming GPA is much easier for privileged kids. My wife and I carefully manage her younger step siblings’ course schedules to maximize GPA. We schedule meetings with professors, counselors, schedule retakes and extra credit, etc. I can’t imagine how it would be easier for a kid with an unstable home life, who is moving around, maybe has parents getting divorced, etc., to keep up their GPA over several years than to do well on one test.

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Indeed, because of diminishing marginal returns on studying, even being in the 50th percentile of SAT test prep hours can improve your score by 10 percentiles. It’s hard to know how many students spend 0 hours studying but it is definitely the plurality if not more than 50%. However, implementing such a study program in schools has two obstacles: (1) is forcing a student to do more than zero hours of studying the same as doing more than zero hours of studying? Will such a student just zone out and get 0 gains, but your study will book positive time spent studying? (2) 80% of the exam score will still be explained by G factor.

I don’t know how many hours of studying 50th percentile is or whatever, by the way. This just comes from the math and the fact that the test scores are “ex Gaussian” - skewed normal, where the small skew is explained by everything that isn’t G, like studying.

As much as I agree with the overall premise that a GPA is harder to focus on than test prep, I disagree that poor families can afford test prep. Blowing away $1000+ so your child (who is not a star student) can potentially get a better SAT score is not going to be something that a poor family considers to be possible.

Anecdotally, I write this comment from the couch of a poor family. My girlfriend’s parents (who I am visiting) live on welfare in a 1 bedroom apartment (hence the couch we are sleeping on). They have a 15-year-old son who could potentially benefit from test prep. He’d also benefit more immediately from a haircut, new clothes, and a therapist. If the parents had $1000, they’d probably buy all of that instead, or lottery tickets.

Extra anecdotally, I also have a 15-year-old stepsister, who has a rich mom. She has new clothes, a nice haircut, and antidepressants. Soon she’ll have a car for when she’s 16 and most likely will revive some SAT prep. I have noticed (or at least have theorized) that because my girlfriend’s family cannot afford these things for their children, her young brother in a state of arrested development. His lack of luxury is causing him to miss certain life milestones. His maturity is stunted (even for a 15-year-old boy) and he would not be a good candidate for test prep.

It’s not like they just spend $1,000 all of a sudden. Poor families plan for that expense and spend the money: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/magazine/asian-test-prep-...

> This summer, Wang and his two younger brothers shared a room with one bunk bed, taking turns sleeping on the floor’s bamboo mat. His parents were in the other bedroom, with his sister and youngest brother. If test-prep classes were ever a financial burden for them, they never showed it, brushing off Wang’s questions, he says, telling him: “You’re just a little kid. Calm down, and leave the finances to us.”

Just because one poor family has paid for test prep doesn’t mean all families can afford this expense.

OP’s comment about other needs (haircut, clothes, etc.) is very real. Where would you suggest test prep stacks relative to paying rent on time, food, clothes, etc.? Are you really suggesting that all poor families that haven’t spent on test prep are simply ignorantly misprioiritizing spend? It seems like there’s a massive gap between your life perspective and that of a poor person’s.

You're missing Rayiner's point. Stuyvesant kids have a 1466 ((<https://brainly.com/insights/best-worst-public-high-schools-...>)), not 1300; Rayiner understated it) average SAT score. Either

* families, often very poor Asians as stated, prioritized saving up for test prep, or

* the kids didn't need it and got the score anyway.

Which would you prefer to support your ideological priors?

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-prep-rite-passage-asian-americ... ("While affluent Asian-Americans are more likely to take test prep, 46.7 percent of low-income Korean-Americans still took a prep course.").

> OP’s comment about other needs (haircut, clothes, etc.) is very real.

Those are short-term expenses. Families can plan for long-term expenses over years. By your logic poor people would never be able to afford a car. But 80% of people living in poverty do have access to a vehicle.

> Are you really suggesting that all poor families that haven’t spent on test prep are simply ignorantly misprioiritizing spend?

I don't know what the priority should be for doing well on tests. My point is that a $1,400 one-time expense is not out of reach even for most poor people.

And nobody said "all."

> It seems like there’s a massive gap between your life perspective and that of a poor person’s.

I grew up very comfortable, but I have family from Bangladesh who immigrated to pretty close to the bottom of the totem pole. Not the very bottom, not homeless, but public housing, working the lowest end service jobs, etc. My wife's parents grew up extremely poor (as in buying meat at the grocery store was a luxury until she was an older kid). Many people really don't understand the difference between people who are destitute (which is a very small number of people) and "normal" poor people.

SAT test prep doesn’t have to cost thousands. A prep book, a timer/clock, and time reading through the tricks and taking practice test(s) would be at least 70% there if not more.

I'm not too sure about your guess that most Americans can afford even a one time payment of a couple thousand dollars. That seems to way underestimate how impoverished many families are. To your note about GPA being easy to game, that's definitely true. The real issue is that families with means will likely always be able to game the system in some way. Testing and college admission coaches can be hired, opportunities can be acquired through family/connections, etc. I think colleges are struggling to reduce game-able metrics (like dropping the SAT), but it really feels like an almost intractable problem.

No you overestimate the level of poverty. NYC is the poster child for Asian kids doing test prep, but it’s Asian population is among the city’s poorest. Stuyvesant, the city’s top test-based HS, is majority Asian but half the kids are in poverty. I have immigrant family members who came over from Bangladesh and lived in public housing. They could still afford test prep.

> My wife and I carefully manage her younger step siblings’ course schedules to maximize GPA. We schedule meetings with professors, counselors, schedule retakes and extra credit, etc.

That's like another planet for me. Should kids really need to focus on their career so early?

What else would the kids be doing?

America has to compete with Asia now. The self-indulgent culture that arose from America being unchallenged on the world stage will have to come to an end.

15 years ago, I would have agreed with you because I thought the Asian system couldn’t produce innovators like the American system. China has proved that wrong.

I'm sorry, but that attitude is just pathological careerism to my ears.

Growing up, I was the oldest of several kids, and my parents had a mostly hands-off approach to letting me grow up. It was mostly great, but my GPA was in the bottom 10% of the school's performers (which the staff would remind my family of quite frequently). Unless your parents are motivated to go the extra mile, proofread everything you write, parse math with their kids and help them read Shakespeare, getting a 4.0 becomes pure mythology. I graduated with a GPA in the low 2s, and a cumulative SAT score in the 1300s. You can draw your own conclusions, but it's moreover an example of how dumb it is to try to position kids on a gradient of success.

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