Haydon Nix
Professor Matuszewski
English 101
7 March 2017
The SAT
The SAT is a test of student’s academic skills, used for admission to United States colleges. The SAT tests a student’s knowledge of reading, writing, and math, subjects that are taught every day in high school classrooms. Most students take the SAT during their junior or senior year of high school, and almost all colleges and universities use the SAT to make admission decisions. The idea behind this test is to provide colleges with one common criterion that can be used to compare all applicants. Schools also consider high school GPA, academic transcripts, letters of recommendation, interviews and personal essays. The amount of weight placed on the SAT by colleges’ limits who can go to college. The SAT favors wealthy students, does not test college curriculum, and is too …show more content…
The majority of studies have shown that SAT scores correspond to socio-economic class. Socio-economic is a measure of a person’s work experience and an individual’s or family’s economic and social position in relation to others, based on income, education, and occupation. Students can easily spend upwards of 15,000 dollars preparing for the SAT. Clearly this shows that wealthy students have an advantage when it comes to preparation for this test. Students coming from a lower income family may not have the ability to pay for a tutor, so they are at a clear disadvantage. Given the widespread use of the SAT in college admissions, the implications are obvious: Not only are the wealthiest families best equipped to pay for college, their kids on average are more likely to post the scores that make admissions easy. So, when it comes to bias in the SAT, the higher the income, the higher the score. Therefore, the SAT is in favor of wealthy
Professor Matuszewski
English 101
7 March 2017
The SAT
The SAT is a test of student’s academic skills, used for admission to United States colleges. The SAT tests a student’s knowledge of reading, writing, and math, subjects that are taught every day in high school classrooms. Most students take the SAT during their junior or senior year of high school, and almost all colleges and universities use the SAT to make admission decisions. The idea behind this test is to provide colleges with one common criterion that can be used to compare all applicants. Schools also consider high school GPA, academic transcripts, letters of recommendation, interviews and personal essays. The amount of weight placed on the SAT by colleges’ limits who can go to college. The SAT favors wealthy students, does not test college curriculum, and is too …show more content…
The majority of studies have shown that SAT scores correspond to socio-economic class. Socio-economic is a measure of a person’s work experience and an individual’s or family’s economic and social position in relation to others, based on income, education, and occupation. Students can easily spend upwards of 15,000 dollars preparing for the SAT. Clearly this shows that wealthy students have an advantage when it comes to preparation for this test. Students coming from a lower income family may not have the ability to pay for a tutor, so they are at a clear disadvantage. Given the widespread use of the SAT in college admissions, the implications are obvious: Not only are the wealthiest families best equipped to pay for college, their kids on average are more likely to post the scores that make admissions easy. So, when it comes to bias in the SAT, the higher the income, the higher the score. Therefore, the SAT is in favor of wealthy