The SAT is a ‘wealth test’—not an intelligence indicator, new data shows

The SAT has become much more than a test, and almost a right of passage for high schoolers everywhere for those who intend to head to college. But a new report from The New York Times says it’s demonstrating something other than intelligence — wealth. The shocking results point to deep inequities in education, where the rich prevail, heading with their top scores to private institutions with high standardized test requirements, and the rest don’t.

“A 1300 on the SAT (or 29 on the ACT) is a high score, one that can open a path to America’s top public and private colleges,” the report says. “But new data, on students who graduated in the 2010s, shows just a sliver of the country’s poorest students reached that level.” In fact, only 2.4% of students in the bottom 20% of family incomes achieved this score. In other words, this means students with the lowest income households made up only 2 in 100 students who scored a 1300.

But it doesn’t end there — there was even a gap between the top 20% of high-income families and the top 1%. Those in the top 1% were 13 times more likely than the poorest students to reach a 1300. “Those in the top 0.1% whose parents earned an average of $11 million scored higher still,” they concluded.

Love that “SAT scores reflect parents’ wealth” is trending on LinkedIn news.

Umm yeah, most of us who want kids want to give our kids better than we had. The wealth I have is fully self earned and every dollar to my name is spent on helping my kids.

So yeah, parents who will…

— paige s. (@PaigeSully88) October 24, 2023

The article, written by Clair Cain Miller points to multiple reasons for students from lower-income families struggling with this testing and also the college admission process:

• Legacy admissions that favor rich, white families, she reports
• Athletic recruitment
• Standardized testing issues like this
• Preferences for private school students
• Summer travel and college prep services that cost “more than college itself”
• A college degree is a necessity for middle-class status, breeding parental competition, she adds

This very topic is currently trending on LinkedIn, with many calling out how the likelihood of a high SAT score grows with the student’s parents’ earnings.

The article points to students being disadvantaged based on socioeconomic gaps long before they are sitting for their SAT. It starts even before kindergarten. So, the SAT’s “wealth test” issue is just the tip of the iceberg and, as one professor in the report concludes, “18 years too late” to fix it.