On a cold, drizzly evening, the copper-colored track inside the Armory Track and Field Center in Upper Manhattan was as inviting as a crackling fireplace. Hundreds of sprinters and middle-distance runners from public and private high schools were taking wintertime practice, cantering around the indoor track with the exuberance of youngsters taking still-sprouting bodies to once unimaginable peaks.

Among them were Malia McPherson, Dieubi Joinvil and Altagracia Vasquez. But unlike most of the other runners, these three knew that once they changed into street clothes, they would be sitting still for another kind of practice. Two flights down in a high-ceilinged room, they and 35 others would get coaching on the SAT they plan to take on Saturday.

In seven sessions over 10 hours, they have learned not only exotic words like “nonchalant” and “abjure,” but also canny strategies like eliminating patently wrong choices so guesses will be more focused, thus reducing penalties for wrong answers. “If you’re certain two of the five choices are wrong, then answer that question,” their teacher Clayton Harding instructed them. “Then you have a one-in-three chance of getting it right.”

The course, paid for with a $100,000 federal grant, is intended to help poor and immigrant runners in the Armory’s program decipher the often complex college admissions process. Malia, Dieubi, Altagracia and the other 35 students have already taken three sessions in which they learned how to choose a college, charm a reader on an essay, scout out financial aid and conduct oneself during an interview.

“They taught me don’t use the word ‘like’ or don’t say ‘ummmm,’ ” said Malia, a 400-meter runner from Paul Robeson High School in Brooklyn whose parents are immigrants from Haiti and Jamaica. “Take a deep breath. Try to focus on what you have to say. Be polite, as respectful as possible.”

For such students, the playing field is being leveled — just a few notches, but in significant ways. Suburban or upscale city youngsters are more likely to afford SAT prep courses that cost $1,000 and up, have parents who have been through the admissions rigmarole, and attend high schools where counselors focus on fewer students.

The Armory students are eager to run faster and vault higher so they can get recruited for college teams, but they know they need baseline SAT scores to pass through the N.C.A.A. Clearinghouse, which monitors eligibility for member colleges. They may not have an uncle who regales them with tales of college days, but they have proven discipline. Try running several miles a day to know what discipline means, said Dr. Norbert Sander, the Armory’s president and the winner of the 1974 New York City Marathon.

Even for those students who will never run for a college team, Armory officials are trying to capitalize on the students’ passion for track and offer them the benefit of a college prep course. And such courses are essential, since two-thirds of the nation’s colleges require SAT or ACT scores.

“So long as test scores are used for admissions and scholarships, kids should have an equal shot at test prep,” said Robert A. Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, a persistent critic of SAT-type tests. While the College Board, the sponsor of the SAT, says preparation yields a 35-point improvement in scores, Mr. Schaeffer’s organization says the surge is closer to 150 points.

“If it didn’t work, kids would have told their friends and they would not go,” he said. “Clearly, coaching works.”

To borrow a track metaphor, students like those at Robeson do not begin at the same starting line as students from the suburbs, though they want to reach the same finishing line. Look at the contrast with a suburban school like Mamaroneck in Westchester County. There, perhaps 70 percent of the students have college-educated parents and perhaps 90 percent buy outside tutoring, Bob Sweeney, a counselor at the school, estimated. “The guidance service helps students through the maze in filling out applications, helps them put an essay together, points them in the right direction,” Mr. Sweeney said. “Sometimes the kids are so overwhelmed by paperwork they just can’t get started.”

Counselors at public urban high schools may do as good a job, but they are “swamped,” said Richard Carlin, an assistant coach at Sheepshead Bay High School who helps Armory runners with their essays. A typical public school counselor handles 300 students, not the 185 in Mamaroneck.

Until Malia and Dieubi and most of the other students began the coaching, college was a fuzzy place on the horizon, as dreamlike as a royal palace, and the road toward it might as well have been hidden by jungle. In many cases, parents could not help find the path. Dieubi, 17, a middle-distance runner at Wingate Educational Campus in Brooklyn, said his mother, a Haitian immigrant who did not complete high school, “can offer me moral support or tell me whether a decision is right or not, but other than that she doesn’t know about the logistics of application or financial aid.”