What is more effective, taking a SAT prep course or hiring a tutor?
December 6th, 2009 | 
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Hi and welcome to my blog,
I opened this blog to help anyone who is preparing for his SAT.
I remember myself when I started - I was so lost and in such a panic.
Luckily I got this great SAT guide that helped me a lot . So study hard and good luck!
I am a sophomore in high school and I am taking my very first SATs very soon. After I take them my parents want to me take SAT prep courses. However I am not sure if I should just hire a private tutor. Which method do you think is more effective to help me get a better score the next time I take the SATs?
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It depends on who is teaching the prep class and who is the tutor. Everything being equal the tutor would be best./
Check out the following website:
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/prep_one/prep_one.html
There are official SAT practice questions, official SAT practice questions of the day, and an official SAT practice quiz that you can take online and get a score report. All of the above are offered for free. College Board also offers items that can be purchased. There is an official SAT practice course offered online, which means there is no traveling to a school or tutoring center for prep courses. There is also an official SAT Study Guide that you could order. I would recommend that you read through all the study tips that this website offers for free in the SAT Preparation Center before purchasing any items. Take a few of the practice quizzes after reading through the SAT Skills Insight and General Test-Taking Approaches and look at the results. If you are hoping for better results, consider purchasing some of the items offered through this website to use before your test date.
If you can study and prepare yourself enough the first time, even if your first test is soon, you may only need to take it one time. Personally speaking, I wouldn’t want to have to prepare myself more than once to take the SAT. I would try to do my best the first time through.
I’m all for tutors over classes (full disclosure, I’m a tutor, but I’ve also taught SAT classes for the big prep companies and smaller local companies). You’re generally going to get more bang for your buck with a tutor, and you can insist on using College Board materials rather that whatever junk the big prep companies are publishing at the moment (seriously, avoid Kaplan like it’s going to give you the swine flu!) Some smaller local prep companies do use College Board materials, so if you can find one, that’s a reasonable option, too. The College Board also has their own online prep course which I think is decent, and a good supplement to any tutoring you’re getting. The reason I’m so insistent on using College Board materials is that their questions are as close as it gets to the real thing. Other prep companies’ materials are notoriously inaccurate (too hard, too easy, too convoluted, etc.). You want your study to be focused on questions that are going to be most similar to those you’ll see on test day!
A good resource for private tutors is wyzant.com if you need some ideas. I wouldn’t get started on any serious prep now since you’re only a sophomore, and you’ve got plenty of time! You’ll want to get started on prepping 3-4 months ahead of test day. If it were up to me, I’d tell you to hold off on taking it at all until you’re a junior, but since you’re already signed up, go ahead and do it. But don’t take it again until January of your junior year at the earliest! What I would recommend for now is to just read everything you can get your hands on, from newspapers to novels – it’s the absolute best way to get ready for the reading sections. You can also get started on vocabulary at any point, since that process is best done over years anyway. I really like http://www.word-nerd.com for vocabulary – it’s been a god-send for some of my students, so check that out if you don’t already have a plan for vocab.
Best of luck to you!
I would suggest that you join a Sat prep group, this way you would be in touch with the other students as well and can share the information with each other. I would also like to suggest that you take the online practice tests available online, so that it improves your speed and you have the hang of it. I recommend examville.com for taking the tests, as it has the best practice tests, review classes and the subject specific test.
All the best
Hiring a tutor is definitely more effective. However for verbal and essay you can take Vocabulary Building package from Lexiology.com
http://www.vocabbuilder.net/sat/vocab-flash
They have adaptive learning method which will remove the pain of learning a large wordlist.