<p>xiggi:</p>
<p>I concur with your post #15. I’m not suggesting that the SAT favors the wealthy by design or by intention, but by results/outcomes. CR in particular requires strong reading skills of some high level HS material, the latter of which is sorely lacking as a resource in many inner city high schools. But such high schools contain all kinds of students, including whites and Asians.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Or schools in poor suburbs and rural areas also.</p>
<p>^^ Of course, it applies to ANY school with less than “average” resources, which includes high quality teachers. Those high schools exist even in some suburban communities, as well.</p>
<p>@juilet the .95 R^2 figure you cited is between average SAT scores at a given income level and that income level. That means that 95% of the difference in the average scores at income levels X and Y is determined by the difference in income instead of 95% of the difference in scores between individual test-takers being determined by income. Although there are sizable difference between the highest and lowest income groups on an individual basis the amount correlated with wealth is likely much smaller given that the large amount of in group variation. If you accounted for variations in genes and school quality the predictive power of wealth would very likely decrease further.</p>
<p>Notably even for students in the highest (200K+) bracket the average SAT is only 1700.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>“Even in some” suburban communities? More like many suburban communities. Nothing about being a suburban community makes it immune from poverty or low quality schools – indeed, those characteristics exist in many suburban communities.</p>
<p>At least 49.9% of all high schools are below average (except in Lake Wobegone, where every HS is above average, and on cc, where every chance thread starts with ‘attend top high school…’). </p>
<p>And THAT is my point. There are literally hundreds of thousands of seniors in the US - of all races and ethnicities – who attend below average high schools, but could thrive at a highly selective college.</p>
<p>^^ And isn’t college admission “just” a tool schools use to allocate a scarce resource (seats at selective schools)- - rather than an infallible predictor of college (or career) success? Does anyone really doubt that thousands of kids who are not admitted to selective schools could be successful there?</p>
<p>The colleges themselves state they could fill their class over again with equally talented students.</p>