The Quaker Valley senior is talking about her SAT I score, a number she thinks should be higher to boost her prospects of getting into college - be it Penn State, Michigan, Miami or any of another half dozen she is interested in.
That's why Erny, 17, who has a 4.0 grade point average, is giving up her weekends and three nights a week for six weeks to take an SAT preparation course called the Princeton Review. At $745, the Princeton Review is the 1,000-pound gorilla of SAT preparation.
Erny is among hundreds of local high school juniors and seniors turning to specialized classes, computer software or Web sites in a quest for higher SAT scores and possibly scholarship money.
'This is the last straw,' Erny said. 'I took (the test) twice last year, and I scored the same both times. I was very unhappy with that.
'This (class) is three times a week, and it adds up to 12 hours a week with three to four hours of homework. I do it because it's worth it.'
While Erny does not want to think about the possibility of scoring a 1080 again - or lower, for that matter - she said she is more than prepared for her next bout with the college boards on Oct. 13.
Her confidence comes from her preparation course.
'They feel that (the SAT) is a test that tests how well you take a test,' she said. 'A lot of it is just learning different strategies and how to take the test.'
However, the cost of the Princeton Review compared with its less expensive competitors - a myriad of books, Web sites and other courses - did make Erny raise an eyebrow.
Erny's mother, Sharon Beddard, also was wary of the expense.
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'She's taken the test twice, and the first time she got a 1080, which is fine, but for the kind of student she is, we all had hoped she would have done better.' Beddard said. 'In a way, I didn't want to get sucked into it. But her rank and GPA were so good, I didn't want this to be the one thing to hold her back.'
Erny said she hopes to recoup the cost of the test in scholarship money.
'I run cross country. I'm a 4.0 student. Any application would be really acceptable except for my SAT scores,' she said.
'I wasn't going to take a course, but then my mom said, 'Let's see what happens.' In the long run, we would probably save more money off the college tuition. For me, I see a lot of kids I know who are getting 1200s and 1230s, and I know I work so much harder. It's hard for an admissions officer to see your work ethic over a test.'
SAT QUESTIONS
Bob Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, a standardized test watchdog organization, raises questions about SAT prep courses and test scores.
'Independent research indicates that a good test prep course raises test scores on average of little more than 100 points,' Schaeffer said. 'Is that really necessary or helpful in the admissions process?'
He said the preparation courses increase the disparity between affluent and low-income students.
'Kids from low-income districts are further behind the eight ball because they don't get coaching,' he said. 'The average test scores go up directly with family income with the SAT - 30 points for each $10,000 in family income.'
A spokeswoman for the College Board, a nonprofit organization that administers the SAT, referred questions about test preparation to statements on the organization's Web site, www.collegeboard.com . That page says coaching courses can improve test scores but not as much as the companies claim.
'According to a research study completed in November 1998 by Educational Testing Service, coached students are only slightly more likely to have large score gains than uncoached students,' the statement read. 'Furthermore, about one-third of coached students are likely to have no score change at all, or to have scores actually fall.'
The study found students answered one more verbal question correctly for every 25 to 30 hours of effort and one more math question correctly for every eight or more hours of effort, the page says.
'Students using the largest and most costly coaching firms fare somewhat better than students attending other external coaching programs,' the statement said. 'But the effects of coaching are still small.'
LEARNING THE TECHNIQUE
Scott O'Neill, a Princeton Review instructor in Moon Township, said there is a lot of technique behind the test.
'I had one student (who) left all the hard verbal, all the hard analogy blank and her score went up 60 points,' he said. 'There's no point in spending a long time on one question when there are other easier questions that you can go ahead and get right.'
O'Neill said student attitudes to the test should be one of finality.
'I would go into the first one with the attitude that it's my last one,' he said. 'Why take it over and over again if you only go up 10 points?'
Schaeffer, although a critic of SAT preparation courses, said his son took the Princeton Review program.
'If coaching did not work, it would be the only human endeavor that didn't require coaching. If you take half a dozen full-length practice exams, that does teach you a lot,' he said.
'The kinds of things the courses teach you, most basically, is how the game is played. You learn that when you are taking the test, you're a moron if you read the directions. You don't get points for reading directions. You get points for questions.'
Erny has been to two other preparation courses, one through Community College of Allegheny County and one through Northland Public Library. She said those didn't help her much, although other people benefited from them.
Heather Wittmer, 17, a Quaker Valley senior who will put pencil to bubble on Nov. 3, took took the community college course recommended by her guidance office.
'I did it in between tests. I took the CCAC class, and it really didn't help at all,' Wittmer said.
Nicole Levis, guidance counselor at Avonworth High School, said that other than an class called 'Academic Vocabulary,' the school relies on outside SAT preparation courses. Levis said she frequently recommends courses at the University of Pittsburgh, private companies and CCAC.
Diane Gnipp, CCAC's director of lifelong learning, said the average increase in point score for students taking the course is around 120 points, the same as reported for students taking the Princeton Review course. However, the CCAC course costs $73 and runs for 33 hours over 11 weeks.
Gnipp said the CCAC North campus has about 180 students a year in its SAT classes.
Wittmer said she has had better results studying on her own with an independent software package, Compton Learning's 'Scorebuilder,' than with her CCAC course.
'I think this raised my score about 50 points, and I didn't even use the whole program. I just used it about three times a week,' she said. 'I do the vocab. My parents don't have the money to put me through an $800 class, and I can get into college with my score.'
Wittmer's mother, Toni, said SAT scores should not even be taken seriously because of all the preparation courses.
'I think, at one time, maybe it was a decent indication - a true score. Anymore, they teach you how to take the test. Yes, (Heather) took the course at CCAC. I'm sure it's not the Princeton Review, but essentially, anymore, it's ridiculous. It's more of a technique than to find out what they really know,' she said.
Lori Giarnella, assistant director of undergraduate admissions at Carnegie Mellon University, said it is hard to pin down a definitive 'good score' on the SAT, even for her university.
'We have so many different programs. The average score differs according to the different colleges. Someone applying to computer sciences will have a different average score than someone in the music program,' she said.
'On average, it's around 1300, but certainly, that's one of a number of factors, and high school performance carries the most weight.'
For the fall semester at Slippery Rock University, the average score in the freshman class is 962, up from last year's average of 945, a spokesman said.
Erny said she is undaunted by the test and regardless of the outcome, she thought the coaching has been a good experience.
'They have 250 words that they make us learn, and I've noticed those being used daily. I've also learned how to approach things differently like critical reading and stuff like that,' she said.
'If I do perform worse that I did before, I just learned a lot. It's been a really good review.'
Mark Berton can be reached at mberton@tribweb.com or (724) 779-7108.
| More on the SAT |
SAT scores
The verbal and mathematics portions of the SAT I, commonly known as the SAT, each are scored on a scale of 200 to 800. The combined total ranges from 400 to 1600.
The national average for students who took the test during the past school year was 506 on the verbal portion and 514 on the math portion. The Pennsylvania averages were 499 on math and 500 on verbal.
SAT I is scored in a two-step process. First, a raw score is calculated. Questions answered correctly receive one point. Omitted questions receive no points. For multiple-choice questions answered incorrectly, a fraction of a point is deducted - one-fourth of point for five-choice questions, one-third of a point for four-choice questions. No points are deducted for incorrect answers to math questions requiring student-produced responses.
In the second step, the raw score is converted to a scaled score between 200 and 800.
Test tips
The College Board's top tips to doing your best on the SAT I:
Source: The College Board
