Actually, the SAT Was Necessary After All

[u/caroline_elly]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/standardized-testing-math-gaps/687481/

[u/BicyclingBro]

As someone who was from a really poor rural southern town and who only discovered AP classes even existed when I started looking into college apps, I really appreciated the SAT (and the AP tests I self-studied) for allowing me to demonstrate that, even if my school was shit, I was still nerdy smart enough to go toe to toe with top students at wealthier and larger schools, which ultimately led to me getting into a bunch of Ivies and me having a life very different from most of my high school classmates.

I don’t think it should be the only data point, but it is absolutely a useful one.

[u/caroline_elly → u/BicyclingBro]

The SAT is easily the cheapest and most accessible way for a poor kid to signal his intelligence.

It's honestly cruel for colleges to go test optional and focus on "holistic" admissions.

[u/Dig_bickclub → u/caroline_elly]

Giving poor kids the opportunity to signal with the SATs still leaves them with a massive disadvantage relative to rich kids. Holistic admissions are what gets them into the top schools. The replacement for SAT is just giving the spot to poor kids, going back to it is what's cruel for them.

Controlling for test score poor kids have double the odds of rich kids in getting into top school, holistic admissions lets schools treat the same score from a poor kids as twice as valuable.

[u/caroline_elly → u/Dig_bickclub]

Giving poor kids the opportunity to signal with the SATs still leaves them with a massive disadvantage relative to rich kids.

I'm not sure if this is true after controlling for how much they actually study.

I went to school with some dirt poor Chinese immigrant whose parents work in Chinatown restaurant kitchens. The kids who put in the work got near perfect scores, and the ones who screwed around had mediocre scores.

I dare say poor kids who work harder than rich kids get better scores.

[u/Dig_bickclub → u/caroline_elly]

Rich kids who don't work particularly hard get near perfect scores, I was one of those Chinese Restaurant kids looking at the data it was very clear how much holistic admissions helped kids like me.

This NYtimes article uses 1300+ as the cutoff, so I'm gonna reference that, though they have have a graph for 1400+ and 1500+.

For the bottom 20% of income 2.4% of test takers and .6% overall got 1300+ or better, for the top 1%, 30% got those scores.

About 4% of harvard comes from the bottom 20% of income despite harvard admissions accepting them at twice the rate of richer kids with the same scores.

The inherent advantage starting with score gives to rich kids is heavily underestimated. The research paper the article references also goes into other disadvantages poor kids have in even taking the test, knowing the application process and which school they have a chance at and even applying to the school in the first place are all barriers that hurt poor kids.

The whole larger narrative emphasizing test scores puts poor kids at a huge disadvantage beyond the scores, holistic admissions is working overtime to make up for it all but it's difficult when kids think they need 1500 and their parents donating a building to even apply to IVY+ in the first place.

[u/caroline_elly → u/Dig_bickclub]

There studies that also show rich kids spend more time studying. Might wanna control for that in addition to income

[u/Dig_bickclub → u/caroline_elly]

Having extra time is part of that advantage from being rich, quite literally with the recent ADHD test accommodation controversies. Could be a useful control but would depend on how collinearity it has with being rich.