I find the idea rather laughable that someone can be mentally undeserving of a score and have solely spent their way into it. The more pressing point being, the cards had been rigged in her favor from the start, given that her parents are highly educated and well-off; the SAT/ACT tests were the least significant factor here.

Money doesn't translate to points. It's not "every thousand you spend your child gains 50 points." No; at the very least my experiences alone contradict that. Test prep is a complete sham, and for every child you suggest bought anything of value with test prep, there will be fifty more who did not buy anything at all, and simply learned the necessary test-taking skills earlier in life to succeed at such a mundane test.

What money is actually churned on is usually something more like essay guidance, or mentors that supposedly guide students to producing good experiences to put in their college application. This is especially relevant for children of experts/professionals, for they know the path their child must take to appear prodigious and have weathered the rigor of a full education. The tests are the easy part, and Ivies, as I'm sure many of us know, do not accept because someone had good test scores.

It's really not the Ivies we should be discussing; honestly. Scores matter less there. For Ivies the gap between students who were born poor and students who were born comfortable grows even further, and starts from childhood; from day one the parents bring their child to a roomier house with more books and technology and opportunities. Should a public university include testing in its admissions, it may prove an equalizer for people who couldn't afford the more interesting things others put on an application.