SAT Scores Predicting Wealth Instead of Wealth Predicting SAT Scores (original) (raw)
Manchester United
United States
Mar 30, 2004
Club:
Manchester United FC
Nat'l Team:
United States
I am reading a federal government report against economic inequality. A footnote says "Some evidence also suggests the SAT is a better predictor of family income than college readiness (see, e.g., Goldfarb, Zachary A. 2014. “These four charts show how the SAT favors rich, educated families.” Washington Post, March 5, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ow-the-sat-favors-the-rich-educated-families/.)." The article does not use the word "predict," so I disagree with the government using the word "predictor," albeit that is not the unique thing. Richer kids do better on the SAT, but I do not know if I had ever heard of predicting in the opposite direction, meaning using the SAT to predict wealth. If SAT scores predict wealth better than they predict college performance, the test should be changed. The article also said that the average score for students who do not take the PSAT first is 1,409, and the average score for students who take the PSAT twice is 1,612, for a difference of 203. To compare that to me, I multiplied 203 by 2/3rds because those scores were out of 2,400 including writing that did not exist when I took it, and that would predict a gap of 134 for when the SAT was out of 1,600. If each PSAT is considered equally valuable, each PSAT is worth 134/2 = 67 for an SAT out of 1,600. I got a PSAT of 1,320 from 750 Math and 570 Verbal, and an SAT of 1,370 from 1,370 from 800 Math and the same 570 Verbal. A difference of 50 points is about three-fourths of 67. I do not remember being offered the PSAT more than once. Since my Math could not go up, and my Verbal would probably have gone up very little or not at all, I did not retake it. Furthermore, I did not know this at the time, but if my Verbal was 100 higher, it would not have helped me in college. It was normal to take the SAT in May, but I took it in March so I could take SAT II Subject Tests in May. I think the times the SAT is offered are different from when I was in high school.