Or because many colleges do not offer enough need-based financial aid for students with financial need, so they are more likely to run out of money before graduating than those who have parents who are able and willing to pay the list price cost of college.
@blossom do you have a link for that? I’m legitimately curious since most of the literature I’m familiar with says SAT scores reflect one’s SES more than anything else.
But this is not my field.
You surely don’t believe that all kids from poor families are in the lowest quartile of SAT takers, do you? You can be poor and score high. Look at all the kids from severely disadvantaged homes who get into Yale, Harvard, MIT, Brown, etc. every year. These colleges are not taking 450 SAT scores. And you surely understand that there are kids from wealthy families who DO get 450 SAT scores, right? Just because you come from wealth doesn’t mean you will be a high scorer.
There is a difference between stating that in the aggregate, SAT scores are linked to SES, vs. stating that Poor kids don’t do well on the SAT or that Rich kids are high scorers on the SAT.
Some poor kids score high. Some rich kids score low. That’s reality. Any adcom can tell you that. You’ve never met a dumb rich kid or a smart poor kid?
Pell grants appear to be available to those from bottom 40% or so income (approximate for families headed by someone of age to have high school or college kids). Percentages of undergraduates who have Pell grants:
13% Yale
18% Harvard
18% MIT
17% Brown
So, while lower middle and lower income families do send some undergraduates to these schools, they are underrepresented. Meanwhile, the top 2-3% income families’ kids (the ones who get no financial aid) are greatly overrepresented at around half of the undergraduates at these schools.
SAT scores are correlated with family income. That does not mean that every rich kid did better than every poor kid on the SAT.
UCB- my point is not to say that the Ivy’s are being overrun by kids in the bottom tier of income in the US. But to counter Roman’s surprise that there are poor kids who do in fact do well on the SAT. So that knowing someones SES is not predictive of how an individual kid will perform on the SAT.
To reinforce @blossom 's point:
One case in point, especially when I attended is my public magnet and comparable rivals such as BxScience and Btech.
Average SAT when I attended my public magnet in the early-mid-'90s was ~1350/1600(pre-1995)…and the vast majority of the student body were lower-middle class and lower income with many immigrant/first-generation American students…with some immigrants literally arriving just a few months before taking and passing an exceedingly competitive entrance exam modeled along the lines of the SAT. Most of us were also eligible for free/reduced priced school meals.
And I’ve known plenty of well-off college classmates at my college and other respectable/elite schools…including Ivies/peer elites with really lowish SAT scores and abysmal undergrad academic records to match.
With some, my HS classmates and I wondered “How in the heck did they manage to do so badly considering all the resources, top notch educational background of parents, tutoring, etc?” It was especially ironic with one older college classmate as he initially assumed he was academically superior to me solely on the basis of his private school background even after he had already been placed on a 1 year academic suspension and parental mandated gap periods due to his crashing and burning at our LAC.
That is, until we ended up taking the same intermediate/advanced seminar/colloquium courses and I was puzzled as to how he was still heavily struggling considering he was repeating those courses whereas I had no issues whatsoever. Being young and a bit put off by his initial arrogant tone, I have wondered in my own mind “How in the heck did you manage to graduate from your vaunted boarding school considering how badly you’ve f7ked up during your long undergrad career so far?!!”**
- Took 7.5 years to graduate with the parental mandated gap periods and 1 year academic suspension.
** Also ironic as barely a year before, a HS English teacher who also happened to be the writer of my college student profile report to the colleges I applied to said upon seeing my HS transcript/GPA, “Frankly Cobrat, you’ve f*&ked up!”
Let’s remember that the plural of anecdote is not data, so the “I knew a dirt poor kid who scored a 2400 on the SAT” or “My college classmate was rich but didn’t graduate on time” stuff doesn’t really further the conversation when we’re talking about statistical trends.
One simple way in which wealthy college students have an advantage when it comes to 4 year graduation rates is that if they are forced to drop or retake a college course they can afford to do so in the summer when kids without means not only can’t afford the extra tuition, but must work to earn their expected summer contribution.