SAT Tutor Caters to the Kids of the Very Wealthy

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A top-notch score on the SAT college admission exam is worth a pretty penny to some high school students and their families. Or if you’re a client of New York tutor Anthony-James Green, a good score is worth at least 2.1 million pennies.

Yes, you read that correctly. The minimum 14 90-minute sessions required by Green, marketed as New York’s best SAT tutor, cost $1,500 each, adding up to a whopping $21,000. Yikes.

Green’s one-on-one tutoring sessions are offered exclusively on Skype.

With promises of improving SAT scores by more than 430 points on average, and one-on-one hourly tutoring fees ($1,100) that leave many people with their mouths hanging open, Green caters his services to a specific clientele. According to Business Insider, $21,000 is a mere drop in the bucket for most of his clients.

Green tutors, quite literally, the spawn of the 1 percent. His students are the offspring of financiers, hedge funders, CEOs, and mostly entrepreneurs. Each student must commit to two weekly sessions and begin three months before the exam. Demand has been so high, he says, that he often has to turn away new clients, leading some to book his services up to four years in advance.

Green’s website says he’s nearly booked for 2015. He also does ACT tutoring.

Clearly, only wealthy clients can afford to hire Green, helping to skew test results to favor rich, advantaged students. It further imbalances an already unlevel playing field.

Green agrees, telling Business Insider that the SAT is a “brazen class indicator.” He said:

The entire system of standardized tests and higher education is completely ridiculous and ludicrous. But colleges haven’t found any other way to objectively evaluate the merits of a student. You have thousands of students applying to your school — there has to be a way to compare them to one another in terms of math and language and writing skill.

SAT changes are planned for 2016, CNN Money said. The modified test is intended to make the testing more fair for students who can’t afford to pay for expensive tutors, such as Green, and other SAT-prep classes.

“Among the changes: Test takers will no longer need to commit scores of obscure vocabulary words to memory, and math sections will focus much more on real-world problem solving,” CNN Money said.

Green said that despite the planned changes, he believes rich parents will still be willing to pay him for his services. After all, good tutoring and a high SAT score can mean the difference between a state college and an Ivy League university.

How much would you pay for your kids’ SAT/ACT tutoring? Share your comments below or on our Facebook page.

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