7 ms·

This idea that school is signaling is spread so often, but so much shows it’s not true. The thing that correlates highest with SAT score is household income.

This idea that school is signaling is spread so often, but so much shows it’s not true. The thing that correlates highest with SAT score is household income. Household income is also a strong indicator of GPA, school competitiveness, and college attended. I suspect those with money that like the current system spread this information because it makes them feel their success is their own, and not because it was given to them. Unless you are a social Darwinist who believe the poor are genetically worse…

monero-xmr 2y ago
In a society that leans more towards merit, where the highest compensated jobs correlate with higher IQ and analytical reasoning ability, then incomes and SAT scores will correlate. That said there are some total dumb fuck rich kids, and absolute genius poor kids. Just because there is correlation shouldn’t imply anyone is destined anywhere.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > the highest compensated jobs correlate with higher IQ and analytical reasoning ability Is there evidence of that? There is evidence that it correlates with family wealth. Just consider legacy admissions into high-status schools, jobs, etc.
- MrVandemar 2y ago
  But we're distinctly not in a society that leans more towards merit. From what I can see, the highest compensated jobs go to morally and ethically bankrupt raging narcisists, successfully masking psychopaths, and spineless puppets for the previous two categories. There's a lot of it about. (And IQ is not a particularly useful metric of overally intelligence. It's a useful metric of measuring how people perform on a common set of problems).
lupire 2y ago
Poor people aren't necessarily genetically less academically able. They generally have a weaker academic nurturing at home and often in school, which leads to lower developed ability. This is not controversial. What's controversial is how much and what kind of support they deserve from society to overcome the disadvantage in environment.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > What's controversial is how much and what kind of support they deserve from society to overcome the disadvantage in environment. I think calling that controversial is taking a side. We're talking about educating children, who are innocent, and greatly increasing the welfare and productivity of society.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    Observing that there are sides is not taking one. They weren't even saying both sides have valid arguments, merely that people will argue about it.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      It's more complicated than that: One side's claim is that it's controversial. How do we handle that? Perhaps we require them to present a strong argument for why it's controversial.
      - Brian_K_White 2y ago
        If people argue over it, then it's controvercial. It doesn't matter if you think it should be or not. It doesn't matter how valid you think any of the arguments are.
        mmooss 2y ago
        That's one side's argument. You can argue with anything, and then it's 'controversial'. Round Earth vs flat? Controversial! Climate change? Controversial! Basic economics? Human rights? Freedom?
        Jensson 2y ago
        If there are two big sides arguing then that is the definition of controversial. Uncontroversial means there is no big opposition to it. > You can argue with anything, and then it's 'controversial'. Yes, that is the definition of the word. I am not sure why you try to define it as something else, something being controversial just means people don't agree about it.
anonymoushn 2y ago
I don't find it too surprising that people who are smarter make more money.
- tyre 2y ago
  It’s household income of the household they grew up in. Take 10k wealthy kids and swap them with 10k poor kids and you’ll see a massive difference compared to another 20k control
  - frutiger 2y ago
    Did someone actually do this experiment? Maybe there’s some data from the London Blitz?
    - 0_____0 2y ago
      Should be something in the form of natural experiments from adoptions, twin studies, etc.
      - Auracle 2y ago
        There absolutely have been twin studies that showed IQ (and therefore income) is largely heritable.
        felurx 2y ago
        With all else being equal, I'm willing to believe that more intelligence would lead to greater income. But if you're claiming that IQ is the sole/main predictor for income that'd be a hard [citation needed] in my opinion.
        cycomanic 2y ago
        In fact I recall a study (I saw on HN I believe) that showed that IQ is only correlated up to a certain value (not very high, I.e. Lower upper middle class IIRC) but then becomes quite uncorrelated. This certainly matches my anecdotal evidence that most of the rich kids during school were not very smart. The smart ones were typically the kids from academic middle class households.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> The thing that correlates highest with SAT score is household income. This doesn't even come close to being true.
- tyre 2y ago
  You’ll need to cite your sources because this has been studied and it seems to be!
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    Come on. There are no sources that would report this. It makes as much sense as claiming that "as everyone knows, the greatest contributor to tidal pull is the odor of the moon as its cheese rots, which attracts plankton on the ocean's surface". And it has as much scientific backing. Where in the heck are you getting your "facts" from? Here, from a book chapter subtitled "The case for eliminating the SAT and ACT at the University of California": Table 1.1. Correlation of socioeconomic factors with SAT/ACT scores and High School GPA +--------------------+---------------+------------------------------------------------+ | | Family Income | Parents' Education | Underrepresented Minority | +--------------------+---------------+------------------------------------------------+ | SAT/ACT scores | 0.36 | 0.45 | -0.38 | +--------------------+---------------+------------------------------------------------+ Of the three factors they bothered to look at, family income had the lowest correlation, just below a poor approximation of race and very far below parental education. ( https://cshe.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/geiser_chapter_1_final.pdf https://cshe.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/geiser_chapter... )
    - B0btheBuilder 2y ago
      I looked at that table and immediately thought, "Those are pretty solid correlation values", so I was confused by the point you were making. I also read the page in the PDF you linked that was the source of the table and became more confused, because it very clearly writes out that: >What this means is that 40% of the variation in students’ SAT/ACT scores is attributable to differences in socioeconomic circumstance. I think you are either: 1. Misunderstanding correlation coefficients. Correlation coefficients range from -1 to +1, implying a 100% negative or positive correlation. 0.4 and -0.4 are moderately positive and negative correlation values. That table is saying that if you are an underrepresented minority, you are expected to do 40% worse on the SAT/ACT. 2. Quibbling over the "thing that correlates highest with SAT score" claim, because you feel like 0.4 is not high enough of a number. The only factors with higher correlation values than 0.4 in SAT/ACT scores would be stuff like "Was the student currently injured?" or "Did the student make it to the testing center?"
jaco6 2y ago
[dead]
cma 2y ago
> The thing that correlates highest with SAT score is household income. Something like 25% of students at Harvard had a learning disability, one of the highest rates in any school in the nation. Do you think that's real disabilities, or their parents know doctors to give the diagnosis, admissions coaches to tell them to get one, etc. With the learning disability the student gets unlimited time on the SAT and can plug and chug all the math answers instead of having to use heuristics of eliminating etc. On the reading comprehension they can read the passage five times over. On writing they can turn in their 8th draft. https://www.wsj.com/articles/colleges-bend-the-rules-for-more-students-give-them-extra-help-1527154200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/colleges-bend-the-rules-for-mor... https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/how-some-las-privileged-kids-fake-disability-cheat-system-1195212/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/h...
- mr_00ff00 2y ago
  I grew up in one of those small hometowns that sends a lot of people to the close by Ivy League school. It was an open secret that getting a learning disabilities diagnosis is a great SAT booster. Also makes you eligible for more time on regular school exams and you can use it to later get more on the LSATs (not sure about other grad level exams, but I am sure it’s similar)
- Spivak 2y ago
  You missed the 3rd option which is that (most) of the disabilities are real but the accommodations we have massively overcorrect and opens up new strategies that weren't possible when you're given intentionally less time than you need. So you get students who come from an environment outside the "normal" gifted path of private college prep schools who come out of nowhere and score amazingly well. That combo sounds like catnip to an admissions office. I scored really well on my tests, a fact I credit mostly to my adhd (I did not have accommodations, brain goes burr under time crunch), so I have every incentive defend the current system but looking back I genuinely don't understand what we're actually testing for. Perform! Under pressure! In a completely different environment than you're used to, while proctors watch you like a hawk. Your whole future rides on this! is not how I would describe a wholistic assessment.
rafaelmn 2y ago
> Unless you are a social Darwinist who believe the poor are genetically worse… This is guaranteed to be a strong factor, there's plenty of evidence on IQ heritability and correlation with income. Just because it doesn't predict the outcome fully doesn't mean it's insignificant.
- alasarmas 2y ago
  I will guarantee that you came from a rich family, I have plenty of evidence. Your attitude is strongly correlated with the arrogance of generational wealth. Please don’t ask me to cite sources, I know exactly what I’m talking about. If you feel that I’m arguing in bad faith, please consider not responding and instead reflecting on why you feel the way that you do about this topic.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- mr_00ff00 2y ago
  “Regression results suggest no statistically distinguishable relationship between IQ scores and wealth. Financial distress, such as problems paying bills, going bankrupt or reaching credit card limits, is related to IQ scores not linearly but instead in a quadratic relationship. This means higher IQ scores sometimes increase the probability of being in financial difficulty.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289607000219 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... Notice how I cited a source, that’s intelligence. Not just decided I was wealthy and therefore inherently smarter. That’s ignorance.
  - rafaelmn 2y ago
    Your own source says >Previous research, discussed below, has investigated the relationship between intelligence and income and found individuals with higher IQ test scores have higher income. and my comment says >there's plenty of evidence on IQ heritability and correlation with income. >Notice how I cited a source, that’s intelligence. Not just decided I was wealthy and therefore inherently smarter. That’s ignorance. Huh?
lolinder 2y ago
How is anything you just wrote a counterargument to the idea that higher education is about signaling more than about learning? Signaling that you came from a wealthy family is still signaling. And household income itself may very well be correlated with economically valuable skills developed through childhood that would benefit from signaling in higher ed—that wouldn't make income inequality morally just, but it would make it a positive feedback loop, which is pretty much what we observe. If anything the idea that higher ed is more about signaling than learning is supported by the idea that the benchmarks we use are correlated more strongly with pre-higher-ed socioeconomic background than with the school you go to. If higher ed were effective at teaching the skills in question we'd see more of a leveling effect than we do.
- michaelt 2y ago
  Perhaps there are different groups of wealthy people with different views on these things? In my experience wealthy families where the parents are doctors, university professors, and in technology tend to want to transmit a genuine love of learning to their children, as they feel learning and education has done well for them. On the other hand - my friends are merely millionaires, preparing their children to work for a living. Perhaps there are higher levels of wealth where your kids will never need to work, and the ultimate flex is your kid taking a degree in art history and dropping out half way through because daddy won't mind.
epr 2y ago
> The thing that correlates highest with SAT score is household income. 1. Smart person makes lots of money 2. Smart person has children 3. Smart person's children are likely to be smarter, and guaranteed to have more money Sounds about right to me
- mr_00ff00 2y ago
  “likely to be smarter” If you are one of them, clearly not
- vibrio 2y ago
  What is 'smart'?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
anonym29 2y ago
The argument that schooling is signalling wasn't as true in the past as it is now. In the past (think mid-20th century USA), everyone did not have ubiquitous, instantaneous, essentially-free, 24/7 access to more or less all human knowledge ever recorded, from more or less anywhere on the planet, using a rectangle that fits inside your pocket. Back then, information was comparatively scarce, so stockpiles of information had (again, compared to today) much more value to someone who was strictly interested in the information. These days, people who want an education strictly for the information don't have to put up with any of the crap higher educational institutions drag their victims through in order to procure that information. Anecdata: me. Last year I had a gross individual income that placed me within the top 1% of US income earners. After a little under a decade at a MAG7 company, my side project, starting a quantitative hedge fund, has progressed to the point of providing me with more income than my MAG7 employer was. All of my tech and finance skills were obtained for free online. This is the same me who did not even take the SAT, who dropped out of a public community college, who's highschool GPA was likely in the low 2's, but even that was inflated. I'm also debt-free and financially independent before 30. I went to school with some kids who made it into ivy leagues. Most of them are earning high five or low six figures, many still have student loan debt. Also, make no mistake - the loudest proponents of higher education feel the same way about the uneducated as the social darwinists do about the poor, as well as talking to and treating the uneducated about as well as social darwinists do the poor. There's no moral superiority here, they're both priests of delusional, artificially constructed social hierarchies designed for the belittling, ostracization, and exclusion of others.
nuancebydefault 2y ago
Correlation does not prove causation, let alone the direction of causation. Also, one might get the impression from your reasoning that you find that having money makes you smarter.

monero-xmr 2y ago

In a society that leans more towards merit, where the highest compensated jobs correlate with higher IQ and analytical reasoning ability, then incomes and SAT scores will correlate. That said there are some total dumb fuck rich kids, and absolute genius poor kids. Just because there is correlation shouldn’t imply anyone is destined anywhere.

mmooss 2y ago
> the highest compensated jobs correlate with higher IQ and analytical reasoning ability Is there evidence of that? There is evidence that it correlates with family wealth. Just consider legacy admissions into high-status schools, jobs, etc.
MrVandemar 2y ago
But we're distinctly not in a society that leans more towards merit. From what I can see, the highest compensated jobs go to morally and ethically bankrupt raging narcisists, successfully masking psychopaths, and spineless puppets for the previous two categories. There's a lot of it about. (And IQ is not a particularly useful metric of overally intelligence. It's a useful metric of measuring how people perform on a common set of problems).

lupire 2y ago

Poor people aren't necessarily genetically less academically able. They generally have a weaker academic nurturing at home and often in school, which leads to lower developed ability. This is not controversial. What's controversial is how much and what kind of support they deserve from society to overcome the disadvantage in environment.

mmooss 2y ago
> What's controversial is how much and what kind of support they deserve from society to overcome the disadvantage in environment. I think calling that controversial is taking a side. We're talking about educating children, who are innocent, and greatly increasing the welfare and productivity of society.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  Observing that there are sides is not taking one. They weren't even saying both sides have valid arguments, merely that people will argue about it.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    It's more complicated than that: One side's claim is that it's controversial. How do we handle that? Perhaps we require them to present a strong argument for why it's controversial.
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      If people argue over it, then it's controvercial. It doesn't matter if you think it should be or not. It doesn't matter how valid you think any of the arguments are.
      - mmooss 2y ago
        That's one side's argument. You can argue with anything, and then it's 'controversial'. Round Earth vs flat? Controversial! Climate change? Controversial! Basic economics? Human rights? Freedom?
        Jensson 2y ago
        If there are two big sides arguing then that is the definition of controversial. Uncontroversial means there is no big opposition to it. > You can argue with anything, and then it's 'controversial'. Yes, that is the definition of the word. I am not sure why you try to define it as something else, something being controversial just means people don't agree about it.

anonymoushn 2y ago

I don't find it too surprising that people who are smarter make more money.

tyre 2y ago
It’s household income of the household they grew up in. Take 10k wealthy kids and swap them with 10k poor kids and you’ll see a massive difference compared to another 20k control
- frutiger 2y ago
  Did someone actually do this experiment? Maybe there’s some data from the London Blitz?
  - 0_____0 2y ago
    Should be something in the form of natural experiments from adoptions, twin studies, etc.
    - Auracle 2y ago
      There absolutely have been twin studies that showed IQ (and therefore income) is largely heritable.
      - felurx 2y ago
        With all else being equal, I'm willing to believe that more intelligence would lead to greater income. But if you're claiming that IQ is the sole/main predictor for income that'd be a hard [citation needed] in my opinion.
        cycomanic 2y ago
        In fact I recall a study (I saw on HN I believe) that showed that IQ is only correlated up to a certain value (not very high, I.e. Lower upper middle class IIRC) but then becomes quite uncorrelated. This certainly matches my anecdotal evidence that most of the rich kids during school were not very smart. The smart ones were typically the kids from academic middle class households.

thaumasiotes 2y ago

> The thing that correlates highest with SAT score is household income. This doesn't even come close to being true.

tyre 2y ago
You’ll need to cite your sources because this has been studied and it seems to be!
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  Come on. There are no sources that would report this. It makes as much sense as claiming that "as everyone knows, the greatest contributor to tidal pull is the odor of the moon as its cheese rots, which attracts plankton on the ocean's surface". And it has as much scientific backing. Where in the heck are you getting your "facts" from? Here, from a book chapter subtitled "The case for eliminating the SAT and ACT at the University of California": Table 1.1. Correlation of socioeconomic factors with SAT/ACT scores and High School GPA +--------------------+---------------+------------------------------------------------+ | | Family Income | Parents' Education | Underrepresented Minority | +--------------------+---------------+------------------------------------------------+ | SAT/ACT scores | 0.36 | 0.45 | -0.38 | +--------------------+---------------+------------------------------------------------+ Of the three factors they bothered to look at, family income had the lowest correlation, just below a poor approximation of race and very far below parental education. ( https://cshe.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/geiser_chapter_1_final.pdf https://cshe.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/geiser_chapter... )
  - B0btheBuilder 2y ago
    I looked at that table and immediately thought, "Those are pretty solid correlation values", so I was confused by the point you were making. I also read the page in the PDF you linked that was the source of the table and became more confused, because it very clearly writes out that: >What this means is that 40% of the variation in students’ SAT/ACT scores is attributable to differences in socioeconomic circumstance. I think you are either: 1. Misunderstanding correlation coefficients. Correlation coefficients range from -1 to +1, implying a 100% negative or positive correlation. 0.4 and -0.4 are moderately positive and negative correlation values. That table is saying that if you are an underrepresented minority, you are expected to do 40% worse on the SAT/ACT. 2. Quibbling over the "thing that correlates highest with SAT score" claim, because you feel like 0.4 is not high enough of a number. The only factors with higher correlation values than 0.4 in SAT/ACT scores would be stuff like "Was the student currently injured?" or "Did the student make it to the testing center?"

jaco6 2y ago

[dead]

cma 2y ago

> The thing that correlates highest with SAT score is household income. Something like 25% of students at Harvard had a learning disability, one of the highest rates in any school in the nation. Do you think that's real disabilities, or their parents know doctors to give the diagnosis, admissions coaches to tell them to get one, etc. With the learning disability the student gets unlimited time on the SAT and can plug and chug all the math answers instead of having to use heuristics of eliminating etc. On the reading comprehension they can read the passage five times over. On writing they can turn in their 8th draft. https://www.wsj.com/articles/colleges-bend-the-rules-for-more-students-give-them-extra-help-1527154200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/colleges-bend-the-rules-for-mor... https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/how-some-las-privileged-kids-fake-disability-cheat-system-1195212/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/h...

mr_00ff00 2y ago
I grew up in one of those small hometowns that sends a lot of people to the close by Ivy League school. It was an open secret that getting a learning disabilities diagnosis is a great SAT booster. Also makes you eligible for more time on regular school exams and you can use it to later get more on the LSATs (not sure about other grad level exams, but I am sure it’s similar)
Spivak 2y ago
You missed the 3rd option which is that (most) of the disabilities are real but the accommodations we have massively overcorrect and opens up new strategies that weren't possible when you're given intentionally less time than you need. So you get students who come from an environment outside the "normal" gifted path of private college prep schools who come out of nowhere and score amazingly well. That combo sounds like catnip to an admissions office. I scored really well on my tests, a fact I credit mostly to my adhd (I did not have accommodations, brain goes burr under time crunch), so I have every incentive defend the current system but looking back I genuinely don't understand what we're actually testing for. Perform! Under pressure! In a completely different environment than you're used to, while proctors watch you like a hawk. Your whole future rides on this! is not how I would describe a wholistic assessment.

rafaelmn 2y ago

> Unless you are a social Darwinist who believe the poor are genetically worse… This is guaranteed to be a strong factor, there's plenty of evidence on IQ heritability and correlation with income. Just because it doesn't predict the outcome fully doesn't mean it's insignificant.

alasarmas 2y ago
I will guarantee that you came from a rich family, I have plenty of evidence. Your attitude is strongly correlated with the arrogance of generational wealth. Please don’t ask me to cite sources, I know exactly what I’m talking about. If you feel that I’m arguing in bad faith, please consider not responding and instead reflecting on why you feel the way that you do about this topic.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
mr_00ff00 2y ago
“Regression results suggest no statistically distinguishable relationship between IQ scores and wealth. Financial distress, such as problems paying bills, going bankrupt or reaching credit card limits, is related to IQ scores not linearly but instead in a quadratic relationship. This means higher IQ scores sometimes increase the probability of being in financial difficulty.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289607000219 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... Notice how I cited a source, that’s intelligence. Not just decided I was wealthy and therefore inherently smarter. That’s ignorance.
- rafaelmn 2y ago
  Your own source says >Previous research, discussed below, has investigated the relationship between intelligence and income and found individuals with higher IQ test scores have higher income. and my comment says >there's plenty of evidence on IQ heritability and correlation with income. >Notice how I cited a source, that’s intelligence. Not just decided I was wealthy and therefore inherently smarter. That’s ignorance. Huh?

lolinder 2y ago

How is anything you just wrote a counterargument to the idea that higher education is about signaling more than about learning? Signaling that you came from a wealthy family is still signaling. And household income itself may very well be correlated with economically valuable skills developed through childhood that would benefit from signaling in higher ed—that wouldn't make income inequality morally just, but it would make it a positive feedback loop, which is pretty much what we observe. If anything the idea that higher ed is more about signaling than learning is supported by the idea that the benchmarks we use are correlated more strongly with pre-higher-ed socioeconomic background than with the school you go to. If higher ed were effective at teaching the skills in question we'd see more of a leveling effect than we do.

michaelt 2y ago
Perhaps there are different groups of wealthy people with different views on these things? In my experience wealthy families where the parents are doctors, university professors, and in technology tend to want to transmit a genuine love of learning to their children, as they feel learning and education has done well for them. On the other hand - my friends are merely millionaires, preparing their children to work for a living. Perhaps there are higher levels of wealth where your kids will never need to work, and the ultimate flex is your kid taking a degree in art history and dropping out half way through because daddy won't mind.

epr 2y ago

> The thing that correlates highest with SAT score is household income. 1. Smart person makes lots of money 2. Smart person has children 3. Smart person's children are likely to be smarter, and guaranteed to have more money Sounds about right to me

mr_00ff00 2y ago
“likely to be smarter” If you are one of them, clearly not
vibrio 2y ago
What is 'smart'?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

anonym29 2y ago

The argument that schooling is signalling wasn't as true in the past as it is now. In the past (think mid-20th century USA), everyone did not have ubiquitous, instantaneous, essentially-free, 24/7 access to more or less all human knowledge ever recorded, from more or less anywhere on the planet, using a rectangle that fits inside your pocket. Back then, information was comparatively scarce, so stockpiles of information had (again, compared to today) much more value to someone who was strictly interested in the information. These days, people who want an education strictly for the information don't have to put up with any of the crap higher educational institutions drag their victims through in order to procure that information. Anecdata: me. Last year I had a gross individual income that placed me within the top 1% of US income earners. After a little under a decade at a MAG7 company, my side project, starting a quantitative hedge fund, has progressed to the point of providing me with more income than my MAG7 employer was. All of my tech and finance skills were obtained for free online. This is the same me who did not even take the SAT, who dropped out of a public community college, who's highschool GPA was likely in the low 2's, but even that was inflated. I'm also debt-free and financially independent before 30. I went to school with some kids who made it into ivy leagues. Most of them are earning high five or low six figures, many still have student loan debt. Also, make no mistake - the loudest proponents of higher education feel the same way about the uneducated as the social darwinists do about the poor, as well as talking to and treating the uneducated about as well as social darwinists do the poor. There's no moral superiority here, they're both priests of delusional, artificially constructed social hierarchies designed for the belittling, ostracization, and exclusion of others.

nuancebydefault 2y ago

Correlation does not prove causation, let alone the direction of causation. Also, one might get the impression from your reasoning that you find that having money makes you smarter.