Rich Are Better.. In S A T Scores..

[psycopk]

Money talks — at least when it comes to college admissions tests like the SATs. In 2013, students whose families had annual income of less than $20,000 scored an average of 1326; between $40,000 and $60,000, an average of 1461; between $100,000 and $120,000 an average of 1569; and more than $200,000, an average of 1714. This relationship between income and performance has been around for years, the data show. “Kids from wealthy families do better on the test,” says Soares.

Part of this discrepancy is that family income is “connected to a least half a dozen other factors” that give richer kids better opportunities to score well on the SAT, including the fact that wealthier families tend to send their children to better schools and parents in these families tend to be better educated themselves, says Jay Rosner, the executive director of the Princeton Review Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to test fairness.

Plus, wealthier families can afford pricey test prep, Rosner adds. “Some people pay $5,000 to $10,000 or more for private tutors,” he says — which helps ensure the students do the prep work and learn test-taking strategies to help on the test. The College Board points out that it is partnering with Khan Academy to create free test-prep materials. But Soares says that this won’t do anything to change the rich/poor score discrepancy, as “there are already a lot of free materials online and the digital divide is not going away — kids in the bottom 50% still will not have access to materials.”