I had been awarded a generous scholarship to attend the Phillips Exeter summer semester<br />— five weeks of classes and sports, with some optional SAT prep mixed in.<br />So I didn’t understand why so many of them were enrolled in the optional SAT prep section of our summer program.<br />How I Learned to Take the SAT Like a Rich Kid -<br />FLINT, Mich. — The summer before my junior year of high school, I boarded an airplane for the first time.<br />They were gunning for a score on the Preliminary SAT exams<br />that would put them in the top percentile of students in the United States and make them National Merit Scholars in the fall.<br />Family and friends from home thought it was weird that I went to “school” during my summers,<br />but the kids at Exeter saw summer academic programs as normal and enjoyable.<br />My newfound friends worked extremely hard, but they also seemed to have access to a formula for success that had been kept from the rest of us.<br />The bottom line is that students like me — from middle- to low-income families, who live in less<br />prosperous areas of the country — tend to stumble upon opportunities by luck (if at all).
