The SAT's Critical Faults

I'm at a point in my high school career where a huge emphasis is put on the SATs. Every single one of my peers has a tutor or a class they go to, including myself. Some genuinely want the help, and some, like me, take the classes to placate their parents. But everyone around me is doing something.
But in the days of yore, people took the SATs cold. It was unheard of to get a tutor- the SATs weren't something you could study for; instead, they were the purest form of aptitude test there is- what can you understand, and how quickly?
It seems things have changed since then. Now, nobody trusts that their child will know how to read a long, boring passage and answer questions about it, or do simple algebra. So they send their kids to teachers, who tell them how to get around answering the questions asked. I'm not joking when I say the teacher of my SAT class told me not to bother doing any algebra besides plugging in arbitrary numbers, and to not bother reading the "long boring passages" in the critical reading section.
This makes me wonder. First, are we privatizing the SAT? Are we basically giving the highest scores to the wealthiest people from the most affluent regions of the country? Because it seems that people with more money to spend on preparation, to get all the best tricks and insights into the mind of the ETS, will have the most opportunity to succeed.
Second, are we really improving the intelligence of our youth by emphasizing the importance of this test? Or are we dumbing our students down? Sure, the SAT is a highly respected test, and counts for a lot in college admissions. But does it really sound so important when you consider that the high school juniors taking it are being given math problems on NYS Regents Math A topics (usually an 8th, 9th or early 10th grade level of math), and are usually using tricks to get around even that (by instruction of tutors)? This sorta defeats the purpose of the test in its entirety.
What do you think?