Money helps with any metric. If your GPA is bad, a tutor will help far more with GPA than test prep will help with your SAT and cost far more. School project,

Money helps with any metric. If your GPA is bad, a tutor will help far more with GPA than test prep will help with your SAT and cost far more. School project, if you live in a household where one parent doesn't have to work, they can basically do your whole project moving a 50 to a 95. Extra curriculars, these require a large investment of time and money that is harder for a single working parent to pull off. College entrance essays. You can literally just pay someone to write them. You can't look at SATs in a vacuum. You have to compare it to the other possible metrics which all privilege the privileged more.