[Hulk01]

My guess is that SAT prep helps a percentage of kids, if only by accustoming them to the test and showing them a few rules of thumb. 

It seems a weird test of "aptitude," however.  I raised my English test score over 33% between my senior year of HS and my sophomore year of college, as one example.  Did I become dramatically more "apt" in 24 months?  (And I didn't get any coaching; there wasn't any where we lived.) 

My guess is that Stanford admissions has seen enough similar cases to decide that these tests are useful in many cases but not in all. 

[Hulk01]

My guess is that SAT prep helps a percentage of kids, if only by accustoming them to the test and showing them a few rules of thumb. 

It seems a weird test of "aptitude," however.  I raised my English test score over 33% between my senior year of HS and my sophomore year of college, as one example.  Did I become dramatically more "apt" in 24 months?  (And I didn't get any coaching; there wasn't any where we lived.) 

My guess is that Stanford admissions has seen enough similar cases to decide that these tests are useful in many cases but not in all.