What I meant was at their respective colleges, where they each have many friends, poor and rich, from public and private high schools all over the US and world, the majority of their peers at these colleges are both highly creative and top scorers. It is not a coincidence that both these elite colleges seem to look for that combination in many of whom they admit. That combination was not common in their privileged HS, as only 10-15% of the HS scored in a range equivalent to the median of these elites, and arts is oddly rare and not what the popular kids do at their HS.
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Not sure why a statement of fact would irk you, or why you think your anecdotes are more meaningful that actual data, but I donât think it would be productive for me to further discuss your anecdotes, whether about yourself or your kids. Have a nice evening.
Thatâs a big âifâ. Moreover, what does âtypicalâ mean? A 1500 is top 2% of test takers, certainly not typical. 1200 is top quartile, also not typical.
Born in the projects, but was able to check out an old ARCO book from our town library to spend one whole day of prep for the SAT. Only got to 95%, but that was back in the dark ages when you took the SAT in the morning and the Achievement tests that afternoon.
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Typical of kids who score 1500. Test takers from the top 1% are scores times more likely to get a 1500 than kids from the bottom 20%. Thatâs not to say it is impossible for a low SES kid to test well, but it is much, much less likely.
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AO are not clairvoyant- you could have two applicants with identical scores/gpa/similar ECâs and awards⊠one app may have read better. A person canât be condensed to 10 pages and a 10 minute read. Kids donât always end up âwhere they belong.â They simply attend where they are admitted. Hopefully making the best of it or finding a place later that suits. This process is brutal enough without imparting some magical all knowing-ness to AOâs assuming every admission decision is infallible.
After our experience and research Iâve done mostly here, Iâm convinced scores matter way way way less than where you live + go to school. Scores do matter for some applicants, but probably not as many as we assume.
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Surprised this hasnât been linked.
That is really the difference. A low income gifted kid can get a 1500+. However, when we are talking about a student who is academically strong, but is not gifted, their SES will determine their SAT score - if they are from a low income family, they are far less likely to get a 1500+, regardless of their actual academic talent than if they are from a high income family.
I will repeat something that I wrote earlier. The correlation between SAT scores and family income continues until the very wealthiest kids - kids in the top 0.1% by income get, on average, higher SAT scores than kids in the top 1%, who get high than kids in the top 5%. However, for ever other academic achievement, the curve flattens in the top 20% of so, and even drops slightly in the higher SES. Once a family is wealthy enough that they can afford the time and training space for academic competitions that win prizes, additional family income wonât make a difference.
So that increase in SAT scores with wealth, even in the top income tiers does not indicate academic talent.
What is actually correlated with wealth is the percent of students who achieve an SAT score higher than 1500.
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This is not phrased correctly. A more correct phrasing would be:
However, when we are talking about students that are academically strong, but not gifted, the SES of that group will be correlated with that groupâs average SAT score.
This phrasing is important, because the correlation between SES and SAT score is quite low, meaning there is a great deal of variance among individual test scores for students with a similar SES.
I corrected, since it is actually the correlation between income and the proportion getting 1500+ on the SATs. That correlation is a lot tighter and is actually exponential.
Look at the first interactive figure.
What would be explanations for why the 0.1% scores better than the 1%?
Iâm assuming that the 1% can pay for any tutoring that the 0.1% can afford, and perhaps the schooling as well? (I may be distributionally wrong here, since perhaps 0.1% will perhaps have easier admission to impacted private HSs, and hence their schooling as a group might differ from the 1%. I.e. their distributions of âschool qualityâ should heavily overlap but the 0.1% would be shifted slightly higher. But I donât think it would make that much of a differenceâŠ)
Itâs behind a paywall, but I posted numbers from the Chetty study earlier in the thread, which are repeated below. There are many contributing factors to why this correlation exists.
Portion of Kids Scoring 1400+ on SAT by Parents Income
99.9 Percentile Income â 19%
99th Percentile Income â 14%
98th Percentile Income â 11%
97th Percentile Income â 10%
96th Percentile Income â 8%
95th Percentile Income â 7%
90-95th Percentile â 5%
80-90th Percentile â 3%
70-80th Percentile â 2%
60-70th Percentile â 1%
50-60th Percentile â 0.7%
40-50th Percentile â 0.4%
20-40th Percentile â 0.3%
0-20th Percentile â 0.1%
Portion of Kids Scoring 1500+ on SAT by Parents Income
99.9th Percentile Income â 7%
99th Percentile Income â 5%
98th Percentile Income â 4%
96-97th Percentile Income â 3%
90-95th Percentile Income â 2%
âŠ
Median Income â 0.2%
Low Income â 0.0%
Number of time taking the test, more likely to get accomodations, overall conditions for taking the tests, etc. Just accomodations can result in a 50+ increase in tests scores, and the percent of students who get accomodations is strongly affected by income. Iâm pretty sure that the very wealthy find it far easier not only to get a therapist who would be willing to provide recommendation for accommodations based on minimal criteria, but also there is a much higher likelihood that the school would provide the accommodations.
I will not even hazard a guess as to what is happening in the top 0.1% by income.
However, the fact that these are not reflected in any other academic measure indicates that a substantial chunk of that score is not due to academic excellence.
I can agree that those elements are (to some degree anyway) occurring at different/higher rates for wealthier families, but Iâm not as convinced there is a difference between the 1% and the 0.1% that can be explained away as easily. Observing the haphazard workings of a capitalist economy, I donât think any darwinistic rationale works to differentiate the 1% from the 0.1% either. It would be an interesting exploration understanding it (given the assumption that most 0.1% families arenât as ethically slanted as the Singer families or the negative stereotypes that get bantered around on social media)
That is why I am puzzled. I do think that in those levels of wealth, ethics are sometimes warped, but at that level of wealth, SATs arenât really something that they have to worry about. The top 0.1% earn over $3 million a year, and that is mostly capital gains, meaning that their actual worth is a couple of orders of magnitude higher. They are the income range from which kids are accepted off the Special List.
So while I do believe that they would easily bend rules to help their kids get into a name brand college, they donât need to do so. Maybe itâs just another way that the powers-be make things easier for the very wealthy by making the rules a bit more flexible.
Or, since you can make this happen if you throw money at it, they do. The super expensive college prep people claim to be able to improve a kidâs SAT scores by over 100 points, so there seem to be ways by which money can increase scores. There is also âdiagnosis shoppingâ, and there is good evidence tha, if you are very wealthy, you can find professionals who will provide a requirement for accomodations on the flimsiest of pretexts, and, just as important, the high school, wonât refuse the requested accommodations. I know of middle class families who had to struggle to get test accommodations even after a diagnosis. That doesnât happen to families in the top 0.1% by income.
While I donât think that they would commit criminal acts when it is just a bit more expensive to buy an admission legally, questionable diagnoses and whatever these million dollar counseling services do are cheaper than donations large enough to get your kid into an Ivy.
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This is blatant stereotyping about the wealthy being used as an argument against the usefulness of the SAT in college admissions. It will be useless to argue with you against these prejudices so I wonât try
Based on my experience as someone who is from a lower middle class background who went to Yale and who now interviews applicants, there is much validity to Yaleâs decision to bring back the testing requirement. SAT and other tests are hard data that make it easier to detect diamonds in the rough and to peer through inflated grades. Yale is as aware as anyone about the correlation between wealth and scores (itâs not because of âaccommodationsâ) and can adjust for that.
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The College Admissions scandal kind of got swept under the rug when it was all said and done. The reality is there is a strong likelihood of similar behavior that hasnât been caught and that continues. A current NHL hockey player admitted on his podcast that he âcheatedâ on his ACT. That stuff is still happening.
Because how many wrong answers on an SAT does that correlate to?
How does Yale adjust for potentially terrific students who donât apply because they either donât take the test (most low SES kids donât) or because they donât think their test score is high enough?
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Most states require either an ACT or SAT, so most low SES students do indeed take the test there. So a good sized pool to choose from. Not everyone, but some wealthy kids dont test either.
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According to the authors of the most recent Chetty study, for those in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution, only about a quarter of them take an SAT or ACT test.
So 75% do not even take the test.
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