College admissions officers love bell curves. They can look at one, lean back in their plush desk chairs and convince themselves that they can use the beautiful bell to separate superb students from excellent students from very good students from good students from students they don't want. Colleges overemphasize the SAT and ACT for one simple reason: it makes the admissions process easier (for them). Some top colleges have made the test optional but they are in the minority (for now).

The bell curve on the SAT and ACT results from the fact that the tests are speeded: two students with equal knowledge and understanding will not get the same score because one might be faster than the other. If you tell a group of people in a laboratory to hit a button when they see a red light flash and if you graph their response times in milliseconds, you'll also get a pretty little bell curve.

SAT and ACT questions have to be pretty basic because they have to be answerable in under two minutes. There's nothing particularly difficult or deep or subtle on the test. Regardless of your natural test-taking ability, you can develop familiarity with the test, create your personal strategy, build your speed, and increase your score. There are even some real mathematical and analytical skills you can build over a period of several weeks that will serve you well on the test.

Incredibly, the Educational Testing Service used to claim that preparing for the test wouldn't help you. Even when their own research proved that preparation was necessary they continued to claim that their test magically measured your innate ability and therefore preparation was a waste of time. They finally gave up their absurd stance after people like Kaplan and Katzman (Princeton Review) made millions raising the scores of motivated students by hundreds of points.

Taking a course with a big prep company costs hundreds of dollars and is often worth every penny. The down side is, you are often in a class with ten or more people. The good news is, for the same price as a commercial class you can work with a highly skilled tutor one-on-one! -- CTT