The effect of a test preparation course on the SAT scores of students at Saint Joseph Academy

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of an SAT preparation course on students of Saint Joseph Academy. Saint Joseph Academy is a private coed Catholic school in Brownsville, Texas that boasts of preparing students for college. In today's world acceptance into many universities is only achieved with a certain minimal score on the SAT. For more than fifty years students have been striving to excel on this test. Preparation for the test is everywhere in our society: commercial schools, online courses, private tutoring, and high school courses.;Although the performance of the students who took the Saint Joseph Academy preparation course was better than those who did not take the course, only the performance on the mathematics sections of the test was statistically significantly higher and educationally meaningful. The performance of the students on the reading and writing sections was not statistically significantly higher nor educationally meaningful than those students who did not take the Saint Joseph Academy preparation course. The case studies found the students who took the course felt confident and had positive feelings about the course.;The purpose of this two phase, sequential mixed methods study was to obtain statistical quantitative results from a sample to describe the effect of the Saint Joseph Academy's SAT preparation course on the performance of students on the reading, writing, and mathematical aptitude sections of the SAT. This was followed by case studies used to probe and explore the motivation of the students to be involved in such a course. In the first phase, quantitative research questions will address the comparison between the independent variable, the SAT preparation course, and the dependent variable the student's performance on the simulated SAT. In the second phase, qualitative interviews and observations were used to probe significant positive or negative feelings by exploring the thoughts of students who were part of the study.