But did the SAT prep really help people go from 750 to 770? I'd guess that most of that 20 point jump would be for people who start out at 500 or so, and going from 500 to 520 isn't terribly significant. Fixing the last points is much much harder than the middle, so I really doubt that people at that level would see the same absolute gain as people in the middle.
I don't follow the distinction between market as external environment and college admissions as internal environment. Could you elaborate?
So a third is not statistically important?
> I don't follow the distinction between market as external environment and college admissions as internal environment. Could you elaborate?
It's a very simple point: fund managers claim to have mastery over a vast, complex external environment. Interview and test prep courses, like any sort of pedagogy, claim to teach and coach candidates towards self-improvement. The latter is self-evidently simply more achievable than the former. And even if you were to claim that SAT prep schools make no substantiative improvement for students, what makes interview prep most analogous to those, as opposed to other forms of tutoring, or even personal fitness training, which do yield greater benefits?
I'm just saying it's a lot easier to teach someone how to be better at something than to beat the market. They are completely different endeavors.
> Let’s assume the effects of short-term coaching are really just a 20- or 30-point jump in students’ scores. That means they ought to be irrelevant to college admissions officers. Briggs found otherwise, however. Analyzing a 2008 survey conducted by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, he noted that one-third of respondents described a jump from 750 to 770 on the math portion of the SAT as having a significant effect on a student’s chances of admissions, and this was true among counselors at more and less selective schools alike. Even a minor score improvement for a high-achieving student, then—and one that falls within the standard measurement error for the test—can make a real difference.
> Compare that with students from families that earn less than $20,000 per year, who have a mean score on the math portion of the SAT around 450. According to the same admissions counselor survey, a 20-point improvement to a score in this range would have no practical meaning for students who are trying to get into more selective schools. Even when it comes to less selective schools, just 20 percent of the counselors said a boost from 430 to 450 would make a difference. In other words, research has debunked the myth that pricey test prep gives a major bump to students’ scores, but it’s also hinted that whatever modest bumps they do provide are more likely to help the people who are already at the top.
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As for managed funds, they promise to sell performance within an environment composed of many many people. Test prep and interview prep promise to improve performance for individuals. One is about mastery over an external environment, nature. The other is about internal improvement. I don't think promises of personal improvement through coaching, training, or teaching is comparable to promises of gains within a large chaotic unpredictable environment. They're entirely different categories of "buying your way into performance."