[en] Inelastic proton scattering analyses have been used to test the details of the structure of low lying collective states in s-d shell nuclei. In particular, a simple SU(3) prescription for the nuclear states in compared with the results of j-j coupled shell model calculations in ²⁴Mg and ²⁸Si. The SU(3) model, apart from its physical insight into the allowed reaction transitions, is shown to provide appropriate reaction amplitudes without large scale computational effort. In addition, the band structure predicted by the SU(3) model has significant ramifications in reaction analyses