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<p>That’s a gigantic red herring. The truth is, if you don’t have money, if anything, you should REALLY care about the SAT’s. That’s because if your family doesn’t have money, then the most cost-effective school for you to go to, without a doubt, are the top private schools because they are extremely prodigal with their financial aid. </p>
<p>For example, I know 2 guys who grew up without much money. But they did extremely well academically, and got into a bunch of UC’s, including Berkeley, and they also got into Harvard. They then found out that it was actually CHEAPER for them to go to Harvard than to any of the public schools. Basically, the public schools wanted them to take out loans, whereas Harvard offered them completely full rides, including stipends. So their choice boiled down to going to paying to go to a public school, or GETTING PAID to go to Harvard. What would you do? </p>
<p>I will always remember one of them stating deadpannedly that he always dreamed of going to Berkeley but he couldn’t afford it, so he had “no choice” but to go to Harvard. He had a wickedly acidic sense of humor. </p>
<p>The point is, if you’re poor yet you’re an academic superstar, you can go to a top college gratis. Hence, the notion that won’t be able to go to a top college because you think you’re too poor to afford it is a huge red herring. </p>
<p>Now, I agree that a lot of poor people simply don’t know that the top colleges are so aggressive when it comes to financial aid, but again, not to be overly harsh, but that gets back to the notion of proper preparedness. It is difficult to conceive of somebody who really is an academic superstar, but who isn’t aware of how generous the financial aid at the private schools can be. This is something you should know. </p>
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<p>I never said anything about prep classes. I personally never took a prep class for any standardized test, and neither have many of my colleagues. Yet we’ve all done fairly well for ourselves academically. I’m talking about simply putting in some minimal effort to get yourself ready for the SAT. Come on, really, it’s not THAT hard to borrow some SAT books from the library. You can do that even if you’re poor. If you’re not even willing to do that, well, I don’t know what to tell you.</p>
<p>As a case in point, I know a Vietnamese-American guy whose family immigrated to the country with little more than the shirts on their back, fleeing the chaos of the Vietnam War. They had no money, they spoke no English, and had to live some rough ghetto neighborhoods, and all of the kids had to work to help support the family as soon as they were able. Yet this guy still performed extremely well academically, going to undergrad at Harvard, then Harvard Business School, and is now a successful investment banker. His brother went to MIT, where he got his bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD (hence becoming “MIT-cubed”), and then became a successful tech entrepreneur. His sister also went to MIT, then went to a top tier business school (I believe it was Wharton). This is from a family that was scarcely scraping by and whose parents still can’t speak much English.</p>