<p>I feel that these situations is where affirmative action comes in. It's saying that a 13-something from a very poor, innercity student whose first to go to college is sometimes just as impressive as a privileged suburban student whose parents are doctors, etc. with a 15-something.
I feel that expectations contribute a lot to a student's development. For example, I am a low-income URM, and in my family, it's a big deal to graduate high school. Other students however, are expected to go Ivy, etc. These are different environments and I think that colleges need to understand that.</p>
<p>I'll stop saying statistically speaking when other people stop generalizing from anecdotes. :)</p>
<p>What statistics are you talking about? Is it necessary to show that there is more crime and drug problems in inner cities than affluent suburban neighborhoods?</p>
<p>Here is a Wash Post article showing that minorities score 200 or 300 points lower on the SAT even within the same high school. This is Montgomery County, Maryland. It is a mixed county where some high schools are majority white and some are majority black. In my opinion, the whites are generally more affluent across the county so that if a white and a black are in the same high school, the white is more likely to come from an affluent family.</p>
<p>dufus - well, since this doesn't seem as obvious to some of the rest of us, yes, it is necessary. </p>
<p>I freely admit that I'm using anecdotes and that they should be taken with a grain of salt. I never said I had any statistics on the matter. Nor did I claim that there is more and not less drug use in affluent suburbs than in cities.</p>
<p>I would probably get into trouble trying to show that drug use is less in suburbia/rural areas than inner cities, but I really didn't mean to go down that road. I wanted to just make the point that the environment in a suburban/rural setting is probably more conducive to doing well on the SAT. Discussing drugs would just lead into discussions about which types of drugs (alcohol/crack/LSD) are more prevalent in each demographic. My point is rather than somebody in a suburban setting is probably better off than where crack dealers are operating on the corner and kill people alot.</p>
<p>People sometimes seem to want to have it both ways. On the one hand, it is said that URM's do worse on the SAT because they are in poor neighborhoods with bad public schools with parents who are either on drugs or have to work two jobs to support the family. On the other hand, the same people will say that affluent parents are no better than anyone else and their kids are on drugs too. Which is it? </p>
<p>What I do find interesting is that URM's perform lower on the SAT than whites/asians even when they are in the same high school. The better the high school, the better the URM's do; but it is lower than whites/asians. Nationally, the "achievement gap" can be blamed on inner-city high schools versus suburban/rural high schools; but it happens within single high schools. I don't know what this is about. It could still be based on level of income.</p>
<p>Forget drugs, losing the point. From personal experience, one who lives in a very low income family often works thirty hours a week and overall tends to have a lot more **** to deal with.
At the same time, depends a great deal on many other indiv. circumstances.
Yes, drugs/divorce etc. are also prevalent in affluent families but when comparing two frames of mind, which would you rather have on your test day?
A. Drugs, divorce, but at least you are financially covered
B. Drugs, divorce, wondering how you are going to manage to pay your app fees, SAT fees, gas, insurance, rent . . . the list goes on.</p>
<p>habdragon08: "ever think that income has some correlation with intelligence?"</p>
<p>That's possible generally. I am just trying to play devil's advocate here, but what if people with higher income are generally more intelligent, and therefore their kids are also smarter because of genetics? Obviously this is not true in all cases, and is a classist remark. But it could be possible as a general statement.</p>
<p>Obvious point- URM's lower scores on reading comprehension and such can be greatly attributed to the obvious differences in personal "mental sets". Individuals of two different backgrounds can easily have entirely diff. ideas of the author's tone, mood etc. based on their own culturally influenced interpretations of the context (what is considered "pretentious" by a Japanese may be entirely diff. from an Amer. standpoint).</p>
<p>
[quote]
I am just trying to play devil's advocate here, but what if people with higher income are generally more intelligent, and therefore their kids are also smarter because of genetics? Obviously this is not true in all cases, and is a classist remark. But it could be possible as a general statement.
[/quote]
Yeah, the relationship could go the other way - this could be evidence that capitalism is working out for us, those who are most able have risen to the top. The most intelligent people are the ones earning the most money, and then the genetic component accounts for the next generation's SAT scores.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Obvious point- URM's lower scores on reading comprehension and such can be greatly attributed to the obvious differences in personal "mental sets".
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This seems to be an argument that the SAT is racially/culturally biased. I can see how the Verbal might be, not definitely not the Math. Still, if the Verbal was biased, why would asians do so well on it. I'm not saying that all asians have parents who don't speak native English, but the ones who do don't seem to be pulling the asian SAT averages down any.</p>
<p>I'm not aware of anyone scientific who thinks that intelligence is genetic/hereditary.</p>
<p>I'll bet the highest correlation is for a family culture that values education. This includes many low-income immigrants, especially Asians.</p>
<p>Second highest: education level of parents.</p>
<p>Perhaps third: attending a school that values academic excellence and supports it.</p>
<p>Family income, separated from the above, is much less of a factor than most people assume.</p>
<p>Yes, it isn't enough to show a correlation. You have to demonstrate a causal relationship.</p>
<p>Several years ago Newsweek ran a story about the achievement gap. Part of it described how white students thought it was cool to be student council president and do well in school while black students thought it was cool to act disinterested and to challenge authority. (You can imagine who was getting the better grades.) It is not politically correct to make such generalizations when they are negative comments on minorities, but this seems to be part of the problem. Certainly the culture that occurs very commonly in asian families and the attitudes they have towards education must have a lot to do with their SAT scores (see, that was a positive generalization and so it's okay to say that). Obviously generalizations are not true for all members of the group, but generalizations are what give you statistics.</p>
<p>Just so ya'll know, Montgomery County, MD is regularly the richest county in the country... (post 23)</p>
<p>Fascinating</p>
<p>More on Montgomery County:<br>
It used to be regularly listed as the second most affluent county in the US. Orange County in California was always number 1. I haven't seen that listing lately, but it could still be. It is outside Washington DC on the northern side and a large number of poorer people are moving into the southern part of the county. The superintendent of Mont County Public Schools was quoted in the Wash Post as saying that there are in effect two different zones in the school system. There is the "green zone" in the north, and the "red zone" in the south that resembles an inner-city school system in some ways. I know, more than you wanted to know.</p>
<p>I think you guys mean there isn't enough data to prove causality, but there definitely is a correlation.</p>
<p>A correlation is a relationship between two things such that they increase, decrease, or occur together. A correlation doesn't prove that the two are directly connected so that one causes the other. A famous correlation that math professors like to use as a joke in order to illustrate this point is that there is a very strong mathematical correlation between teacher salaries and liquor store sales. As teacher salaries go up, so does the sale of liquor. This is an indisputable fact, but it is not a causal relationship where A causes B. You can't really prove a causal relationship. You can only propose a mechanism for what is happening, but you can't prove it.</p>
<p>There is a strong correlation between SAT and race and a strong correlation between SAT and family income. Both of these correlations are indisputable facts, but neither of them represent a causal relationship. A possible causal relationship in the first case would be that URM's are genetically inferior and therefore not as intelligent. This is NOT true of course, but I am just pointing out how correlations do not provide simple answers.</p>
<p>The higher the income, the better area they live, the better schools they attend, the more intelligent they and most likely there parents are. It's all related. </p>
<p>Also the more Asian you are, the higher your SAT. Just Kidding..... or am I? :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
The higher the income, the better area they live, the better schools they attend, the more intelligent they and most likely there parents are.
[/quote]
That would be a possible causal relationship to explain the SAT and family income correlation, but there is a problem with it. URM students score statistically lower on the SAT than whites/asians even within the same high school (see post #23). Several things can be going on at the same time, though. Certainly students in inner-city schools would perform worse on the SAT than suburban/rural students.</p>