<p>I tend to disagree about someone’s income status not affecting their SAT scores. Most people who are low-income tend to go to crappy, public schools. At these crappy, public schools teachers spend more time getting the class to calm down instead of teaching, which causes the teacher not to be able to finish the course by the end of the year, so many students in these schools don’t learn what most people consider to be basic math. For example, I went to a friend’s house to study for the ACT with her and a couple of others. We basically just took the first two sections of the test and then scored it and went over what each person did wrong and why. Well, when I was helping them with the math portion, they just didn’t understand it because they have never been taught it. Within the first 10 questions, which are usually the easiest they had problems. When I told them that an easy way to solve (a+b)^2 (since some didn’t get why you would factor it) was to just memorize that it equals a^2+2ab+b^2, they were amazed and some said how they liked doing it “my way.” This is something they should have been taught before but most likely weren’t able to get to because of either students being disrespectful, or the teacher just not teaching it to them for whatever reason. So, if they don’t know simple things such as this, how can they expect to apply their knowledge in a problem, that will test reasoning based on skills like that.Also, crappy, public schools also tend to have crappy teachers that could care less about the student as long as they get a paycheck. They don’t care enough to see why some of the students in their class can’t understand a certain type of problem, and would make the student feel dumb if they ask a question. </p>
<p>Also, basic math, such as algebra, starts in middle school. Most of these kids also went to crappy middle schools or didn’t have a good algebra teacher, so they know very little about simple concepts such as distribution and combining like terms. How are they suppose to apply that knowledge in a word problem if they don’t know the skills themselves.</p>
<p>Now, while I agree that low income kids are at a disadvantage, if a student really wanted to, they can rise above that and just teach themselves as you and your friends did. However, I would say that it would be almost impossible (if not impossible) for a student who has always been to inner-city schools, with crappy teachers, and rowdy classmates, since elementary, to get a 2200+ on the SAT. But I do think they if they really was aiming for it, and wanted to try hard enough, they can get at least a 2000+ by, as you said, getting the Blue Book, and maybe asking a teacher if they can stay after school one day to go over some of the problems, and why they got it wrong. I say this, because I am doing this. I understand that some of the teachers in my school are crap, (and just like some of the previous posters stated we aren’t taught grammar at all) however, I have had the advantage of going to a pretty decent middle school and elementary school. Also, I am in gifted, and the gifted students, along with the AP students, tend to get the best teachers, while other students are stuck with teachers who couldn’t teach, much less control their classroom, if their life depended on it.</p>
<p>So basically, IMO, SAT does depend a lot on income-level since income-level has a lot to do with the quality of a school that a student goes to. However, as you said, if a student was motivated, I believe that a student can get 2000+ on the SAT and I believed, that if explained properly a school like Princeton, would understand, if anyone from an inner-city school even decided to apply (which 99.9% of the population of inner-city schools don’t).</p>