By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

As high school students across the state wait with anticipation — or dread — for college acceptance letters, there is more than a little anguish over SAT scores.

But senior year is too late to be worrying about SAT scores. The time to pay attention to the Scholastic Aptitude Test is sophomore year, when there's still time to make a difference in the score, experts say.

The ways to do this are to study harder or sign up for an SAT-prep course.

For years private high schools have encouraged their students to take an SAT-prep class to maximize college opportunities, and they offer the courses in summer school. But it's becoming easier to find such courses in public high schools, at affordable prices.

What is helping to make that happen is a small nonprofit company called College Connections Hawai'i that is taking the SAT-prep classes to federally subsidized "Gear Up" high schools, many of them in rural areas.

These are schools that have a majority of students from families fall below poverty levels. The classes are partially paid for with federal dollars.

"The usual price is $295, but for these schools, the kids only have to pay $50," said Stuart Coleman, director of test preparation for the company.

Coleman said Hawai'i has the "widest gap" in the country — 200 points — between SAT scores from public and private high school students.

In the year 2000 Hawai'i's average public high school SAT scores were 461 in the verbal exam and 491 in math, out of a possible 800 points on each test. By comparison, students at Hawai'i's religious-affiliated private schools averaged 528 on the verbal and 553 on math. Students at the independent schools averaged 549 on verbal and 592 on math.

A preparation course can help make up that differential, said Coleman. "We average score gains of 130 to 140 points, so it makes a big difference. It opens the field of colleges they can apply to and get scholarships from."

But Coleman said the classes do more than teach strategy for handling the SATs. "We tell our teachers, 'Your job is to motivate these students and make them realize that education is really important, not just for the SATs, but for all kinds of challenges in life.'

"What we're trying to tell kids is, 'This is just one of many hurdles you're going to face in your life, and education and training are going to help get you through.'"

Coleman estimates that only about 20 percent of Hawai'i's 12,500 annual high school graduates take an SAT-prep course.

The classes have been around for 30 or 40 years, but College Connections Hawai'i gears its classes toward bridging the cultural gap to minority populations.

The company was founded three years ago by Hawai'i graduates Wren Wescoatt and Andrew Aoki, who met while studying education at Stanford University. Recognizing the need to boost scores in the public schools, they felt the best approach was to make SAT preparation more widely available.

"We teach our classes year-round, and work individually with the schools as far as times and what works best for them," said Coleman.

To find out more about the classes, reach College Connections Hawai'i at 540-0434 or talk to a counselor in your high school.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.