$500 Per Hour Tutors Are Back In Vogue Now That Colleges Have Decided SATs Are, In Fact, A Necessity

It was just about a month ago we noted that SATs were once again being reconsidered by colleges who had reduced or eliminated their requirement due to (pick one: diversity, racism, climate change, equity, gender affirmation). 

As a result of the comeback, Bloomberg noted this week that tutors, sometimes costing $500 per hour, are all of a sudden back in vogue. 

Bloomberg wrote that demand for SAT tutoring and prep centers is surging as several top colleges reintroduce mandatory SATs, and students adapt to the SAT’s new digital format.

Kaplan reported a significant enrollment increase, attributed to digital testing and the reinstatement of testing requirements by institutions and three Ivy League schools—Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown—have reinstated mandatory SATs, alongside MIT and the University of Texas at Austin. This shift has left many students scrambling for preparation before early application deadlines.

Companies like The Princeton Review have also seen a spike in interest for prep services.

Parents Bloomberg profiled are once again investing in tutoring services for their children to improve their chances of success. The debate over standardized testing’s fairness persists however, with critics arguing it favors wealthier students who can afford extensive prep. But those winning the argument still claims that standardized tests provide valuable benchmarks for admissions, potentially aiding in diversifying the applicant pool.

We noted last month in a piece from American Greatness, that according to Axios, multiple colleges used the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to weaken the importance of SAT and ACT test scores in most student applications. But in recent weeks, several schools have reversed course; Yale is considering repealing its prior policy of making SAT/ACT requirements optional, with Dartmouth already reinstating the requirements earlier this month. MIT reversed a similar policy back in 2022.

Other schools that have eliminated SAT/ACT requirements include Harvard and Columbia. Harvard, along with Cornell and Princeton, have extended their policy of making the scores optional, while Columbia’s policy remains permanent.

One of the motivating factors behind the reversal is ongoing research showing a clear correlation between students’ standardized test scores, and their subsequent academic performance and graduation rates in college. Some schools had previously opposed the test requirements for reasons of “diversity,” baselessly accusing the tests of being “racist” and against minority students.