Test Prep
How Well Does It Work?
- Only Asians are helped, but by 50 points, a New York Times article citing a study:
Black students are also more likely to use test prep than white students. Low-scoring Black students are more likely to have taken commercial test prep than low-scoring white students. High-scoring Black students are less likely to use commercial test prep than their high-scoring white counterparts but are more likely to use public test resources, buy prep books and study on their own. These studies have been around for years.
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In his book on elite colleges, “The Price of Admission,” Daniel Golden writes about a time when Berkeley and U.C.L.A. “considered replacing race-based affirmative action” — banned by Prop 209, an anti-affirmative-action law that passed in 1996 and was reaffirmed in 2020 — “with a preference for low-income applicants.” The idea was quickly shut down, however, when officials “realized that it would mostly elevate Asian Americans.”
