By the time Nikki Yang reached the halfway point of her senior year, she had had enough. Not with the school work or teachers, but a much different beast: college testing prep.

The reality is that the College Board’s testing monopoly allows them to swindle hundreds of thousands of high school students every year. There is an alternative test, the ACT, which is equally expensive. How can you get through the college process without surrendering fortunes?

One option, Kaplan Test Prep, offers online and onsite classes ranging from $299 to $599. Surprisingly, this isn’t the most expensive option. There are courses offered from Revolution Prep through Scituate High School, which cost anywhere between $599 and $899 for SAT or ACT prep.

But if you really want to avoid spending additional funds, there are a few tips and tricks that can help you score well.

1) SAT Question of the Day: Free practice questions on math, reading and writing sent daily via email, straight to your inbox. Yes, they are from the College Board, so you could encounter questions just like these on the test. They even time you to give you an idea of your speed capabilities!

2) Alumnas’ old practice books: Instead of shelling out more than $30 for a practice book, ask a Scituate High graduate if they have an old book they don’t need anymore.

3) Ask a teacher: As she was preparing for the SATs, senior Nikki Yang said she sought her teachers’ aid. “I went to Mr. Parkins or Mr. Lynch because they were my English and math teachers at the time, and they would help me out.” They won’t be your full-time SAT tutor, but if you have a few questions, seeing your teachers is a free alternative to hiring someone.

4) Flashcards: This method can work for AP tests too! If you need some vocab words under your belt, the Princeton Review offers 500 vocab flashcards of the most frequently used words on the SAT, available on Amazon for $11, which Yang said “clearly helped.”

But this problem is bigger than SHS. Students across the nation are struggling to pay for SAT preparation materials. And some of the prices strike students as plain ridiculous. Yang said of her preparation materials that she thinks “it helps, but I think that, for an SAT prep book, thirty-something dollars is really expensive. I think even $20 is a more reasonable cost, because I feel like a lot of students buy them, and if it’s for something like the SATs and college, we’re going to end up paying a lot anyway… and if there’s any way to make students a little less stressed, then that would be helpful.”

Contrary to popular belief, it’s possible to get a good score without the dough. But given the economy and soaring student debt rates, perhaps making preparatory resources more affordable should be more prioritized. Even so, it’s important to remember that wealth and good scores are not mutually exclusive.