I just really do find this puzzling, though. If it’s a symptom of academic and lifestyle advantage, why aren’t the 0.1% kids ALSO excelling in every other way compared to the 1% kids?
Even just looking at my son’s friends (educated at the same public high school, working on the same group projects and doing equally well in the same challenging classes), the kids whose families are much wealthier than ours did better on the SATs than our kid… but not better on APs, or on any other academic measure at school. That’s anecdotal of course (and maybe they did some kind of prep my kid didn’t do… he didn’t do any). But why does this difference appear in the stats? I just find it mysterious and none of the explanations seem sufficient.
I don’t think of it as head-to-head comparisons between my kids and other kids. I think of it in terms of concentrations of wealth and opportunity. Extremely wealthy families tend to be concentrated in schools/neighborhoods where the opportunities are the greatest and scores are the highest. Much less so for the top 1% as compared to the top 0.1%.
SAT 25% 50% 75%
Yale 1470 1540 1560
Brown 1500 1530 1560
Dartmouth 1440 1520 1560
It seems to me that the admitted applicants to those schools generally have extremely high standard test scores (if submitted). I don’t understand how evaluating test scores significantly helps these schools differentiate their huge # of high stats applicants, except possibly as a tie-breaker between 2 equivalent candidates.
Could it be that the purpose of requiring standardized test scores for these schools is also to identify applicants with extremely low test scores (if tested) but who otherwise have stellar applications? Maybe, these schools have internal data that a test score below a certain threshold (scaled to the demographic of interest) is a red flag that predicts significant academic difficulties?
Additionally, an unhooked applicant applying from a high school that the university is unfamiliar with might have a much better chance of admission with an accompanying high test score because it makes the admissions office more confident of his/her success at the institution. Do these elite institutions feel that they are losing out on those applicants because they are misidentifying or passing on too many of them?
Dartmouth has indicated that SATs are more of a screener than a tie breaker. Once you get to a certain stage, they are not going back and looking at SATs. But if you score low (by their standards and what low means varies by applicant), then that will show them you might not be a good fit. There is no minimum number, because they look at scores in context.
I don’t know enough to say whether they are or not they are more likely to excel, and I’m not familiar with whatever stats to which @MWolf is refers. But assuming what they reference is accurate . . .
Perhaps it is because an SAT score is a relatively low ceiling stat and competitions and prize wins (both mentioned by @MWolf) tend to be higher ceiling statistics. In other words, given the right education and circumstances, a much wider spectrum of people can access “excellent” SAT scores than competition wins. And because the relative representation of extremely wealthy people is much higher where most people get high scores, then a higher percentage of extremely wealthy people also get such scores.
I don’t disagree that they are looking at scores in context. But when you are dealing with tens of thousands of applications, there has to be a numerical scoring system in order for the process to efficiently function. There may be different thresholds for different populations of interest. I may be incorrect about this, but I assume they are using some kind of rubric.
The context of this thread recently has been focused on the value of a high score. I am suggesting that they are more concerned about the negative value of a low score. If Dartmouth utilized a uniform 1st pass standardized test screen for all of their applicants, it would either remove many of the “diamonds in the rough” applicants they are trying to identify or be useless as a screen. To me, it makes more sense to put the standardized test filter (if that is the purpose) at the end and not the beginning.
Yeah, I’d really like to see any stats that anyone has. For example, are 0.1% kids more likely to get 5 on APs, or to score higher on their IB exams, or SAT subject exams (back when they had those), compared to 1% or 5% kids? Also, are the 0.1% kids excelling on math, verbal, or both parts of the SAT? Is there also a difference on the ACT between 0.1% and 1% kids?
Wealth doesnt always correlate to standardized test scores-many poor countries routinely outperform the US on the PISA tests. Maybe we could use those.
Or maybe we can finally learn that mastery of math isn’t really a great way to comprehensively measure the success of a society or success in a society.
PISA measures things besides math, like reading and science. It measures the success of a country’s public education system, not a society as a whole.
Or do we just object to any test as irrelevant if we do not like the results?
Because somehow we must be the best, despite clear evidence to the contrary?
Thanks for mentioning PISA, I went and looked it up. Do you know if there’s detailed information on disparity at the very highest socioeconomic levels, as we have for the SAT? I’m looking online and it only mentions groups by quartile but maybe I’m not looking in the right place. (PISA 2022 results for the US, section on performance gaps)
The PISA index of economic, social and cultural status can also be used to order students from the most disadvantaged to the most advantaged within each country and economy, and to create four groups of students of equal size (each comprising 25% of the population of 15-year-old students in each country/economy). In the United States socio-economically advantaged students (the top 25% in terms of socio-economic status) outperformed disadvantaged students (the bottom 25%) by 102 score points in mathematics. This is similar to the average difference between the two groups (93 score points) across OECD countries.
yes, within the US, it matters. But many countries who spend a fraction of what we spend on education and have far small GDP outperform us in everything (yay Estonia!). The US is below average of OECD countries in math, and a tad above in reading and science. Given the competition (Brazil, Mexico, the Phillipines) I think it is fair to say the US underperforms. That doesn’t mean the test is invalid, or that the US is " performing well."
I agree that we have some issues in the US especially in terms of math education. But that’s not my interest in PISA in this conversation. I’m just trying to understand the weird disparity for the highest wealth levels’ performance on the SAT, by comparing to other statistics related to education.
PISA is not a test that students are prepping for, so it might be interesting to see if there’s a difference at the 0.1% level as we see on the SAT. Or maybe the whole top 5% (or some other number) is doing equally well on the PISA.
Also, if it’s a test that is not as sensitive to wealth as the SAT, maybe it’s a better test?
Even by the measures of the most ardent supporters of the SAT/ACT, the predictive value of any student’s test score relative to success in college is extremely limited, especially when the scores are considered in addition to all the other available information, as opposed to the nonsensical head to head comparison often mentioned here.
