| Scholastic Aptitude Test, called SAT, has an immense influence in Chinese education. Most Chinese students choose to attend tutoring programs outside of the school curriculum to help them prepare. This study explores the tutoring programs both in China and the United States to assess variables that affect the quality of their preparation. Quantitative research methods were used to investigate the following two questions. Is there a significant relationship between the SAT scores and the average tutoring hours per week for individual-based tutoring program? And is there a significant relationship between the SAT scores and the duration of tutoring for group-based tutoring program? The research questions were analyzed using the variables of SAT results, location of the school, the student grade point average, family income, and student community services. Surveys were used to collect data from the sample population which includes 160 Chinese students in China and the United States.;The statistical analysis found that tutoring programs are significant to the SAT scores. From curvilinear regression, the maximum number of tutoring hours per week was 20 hours and duration of tutoring was found to be 24 months. Surprisingly, high school GPA has a non-significant association with SAT scores. Moreover, there was a converse relationship between family income and SAT scores, betraying the common wisdom in the United States that family income positively relates to student achievement. It is recommended for future research that the results of this study should be verified by pre-test and post-test of SAT. It would also be useful to use pre-testing to measure cultural and personality variables that might be relevant to SAT 1 performance. The high expectation of Chinese parents should also be studied as it relates to student motivation in preparation for the SAT. Additional variables that may affect preparation for the SAT such as the size of group instruction and qualifications of the tutor could also be studied. |
