where are all these people spending hours getting "prepped" for the SAT, exactly? not at my high school... and where are all these test prep gods that are somehow getting enormous scores for "undeserving" students? does anyone actually know anyone who "prepped" their way to more than, what, 100-200 points of improvement max? and honestly that's pretty generous. surely less than the advantage from taking the test multiple times (which is a huge advantage for people with money, surely). unless we are talking very low score -> moderate score improvement... but i don't think that's gonna get anyone into Berkeley... setting hard admissions criteria on scores was already WAYY out of fashion by the time i went to college... i can't imagine it is somehow more in vogue these days.

i have a hard time understanding how affirmative action + SAT scores is somehow worse than affirmative action w/o SAT scores. the former seems like a clear win?