The weather was perfect for a day by the pool or a round of golf.

The seven students in Room 249 of Fox Chapel Area Senior High School were dressed for summer, but they were bent over their books, trying to determine the average speed of a driver who went 40 miles an hour one way and 60 back. One boy tapped his pen on the back of his head. A girl twirled her hair. A few were chewing gum.

They all want to increase their score on the SAT, even though nearly all of them had not even taken it yet.

Mike Goldstein, Pittsburgh regional manager for Ivy Insiders, was showing the students in his class the quickest way to answer the questions -- and to keep them going for an hour and a half, was throwing them Starburst candies.

Some parents can spend a small fortune on their children's college education before they even get in college.

Others can spend a larger one.

Eva Gelman, a Squirrel Hill-based college planning consultant, said the amount parents will pay for help in college admissions seems to be somewhat geographically determined.

"Parents can end up paying thousands and thousands and thousands," Mrs. Gelman said. "If you live in New York City you can even pay more than $20,000, easily. It's out there if you want it."

In her own business, Mrs. Gelman becomes what is essentially an extended guidance counselor.

"Often times parents will come to me because they don't want to be the ones harping on kids," she said.

A former associate director of admissions at Carnegie Mellon University and former director of college guidance at Sewickley Academy, Mrs. Gelman goes through the entire application process with students, from choosing the schools that would be the right fit to reading their essays.

She said she doesn't rewrite the essay, but does read it for content, offering insights on how to make it more concrete. She does that because with the perspective of an admissions officer, she knows it's clear when a student has had someone come in and professionally edit the essay. And some students do, in fact, pay handsomely for a professional editor.

The intense competition in college admissions has spiked because the baby boomers' children are at college age, a higher percentage of high school students want to go to college, and those students tend to apply to more schools than previous generations of students did.

Colleges are inundated with applications and face trying to choose students that they think will choose them so they can achieve the diversity of the freshman class they are seeking.

The most important part of the admissions process is high school grades, Mrs. Gelman said.

From there, she said, students can spend anywhere from $100 to $800 for SAT prep courses, and Pittsburgh-area parents who are willing to go outside of their high school guidance staff for admissions help can spend anywhere from $1,000 up to $8,000.

Ivy Insiders' two-week classes cost $599, Mr. Goldstein said, but there are scholarships available.

Mr. Goldstein doesn't treat the test as a test of ability, but as a game that can be beaten.

In class he tells his students that time is the key to success. He advises them to know the instructions for different parts of the test before they go in, so they don't waste the time reading the instructions.

In the Algebra section he shows how to substitute small numbers for variables to narrow down the choices and he tells his students that on the math section, when they find an answer that works, mark it and move on because there is only one right answer.

Will Bloss was one of the members of the SAT prep course's answer to "The Breakfast Club" last week. Mr. Bloss, 16, is going into his junior year at the high school and spending the rest of his summer on the links.

He isn't taking the course so he can go to an Ivy League college; instead, he has his sites set on Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona, Fla., because he wants to be a commercial pilot. It's the top school in his field, and he is shooting for it.

Laurence Bunin, senior vice president in charge of the SAT for the College Board, the nonprofit that administers the exam, said students should be comfortable when taking the SAT, but that spending a lot on prep classes was not necessary.

The College Board has a practice test online so students enter their answers and are scored immediately.

The College Board also prints its own study guide that it sells for $19.95. The cost of the SAT test is $43. The cost is waived for those students -- 13 percent of the test takers -- who come from low-income households.

"The best way to be ready for the SATs is to take a rigorous course load through elementary and high schools," Mr. Bunin said. "Students who take rigorous courses and do well in school are the same students who do well on the SAT."