Students coming from wealthy backgrounds generally have much higher SAT scores.
This has long been known and suggested explanations include:
- 1. more likely to have prep courses, tutors
- 2. may take the exam more than once because they can
- 3. often living in wealthier school districts with better academic programs, also more likely to attend private schools
- 4. students have more time to study/prep (generally not holding parttime jobs, or babysitting other siblings)
- 5. may have more experience with standardized tests.
- 6. parents more likely to have had college experience Within score ranges, household income can even be used to predict likely test scores!
Reference: Students need more than an SAT adversity score, they need a boost in wealth | Brookings
Within a reasonable range, it is possible to predict SAT scores from household incomes.
Research finds wealth helps a lot
The admissions advantage for students from top 1% families arises from three factors.
24% of the admissions advantage is explained by the recruitment of athletes, who tend to come from higher-income families.
Another 46% is driven by preferential admission for students whose parents attended the same
college (“legacies”).Legacy students from families in the top 1% are five times as likely to be admitted as the average applicant with similar test scores, demographic characteristics, and admissions office ratings.
Children of alumni of a given Ivy-Plus college have no higher chance of being admitted to other Ivy-Plus colleges, indicating that legacy status does not simply proxy for other unobservable credentials that lead to higher admissions rates.
The remaining 31% of the admissions advantage for students from families in the top 1% is explained by their stronger non-academic credentials (e.g., extracurricular activities, leadership traits, etc.).
Children from the top 1% are much more likely to attend private high schools, whose students have much higher non-academic ratings (but no higher academic ratings) than children from public high schools with comparable SAT/ACT scores.
These three factors are unique to the admissions processes of private colleges. At flagship public institutions, admissions rates are uncorrelated with parent income conditional on SAT/ACT scores.
