SAT Math and Logic

Recently our company has been compiling a lot of research and data for a study related to college planning, and today we began to synthesize that data. College planning has only begun to hit the news stands, but over the past 10 years it has managed to creep in under the radar. With tuition inflation rates reaching 16% in some cases, it only takes a few years to crescendo taking most families off guard.

I do not believe the colleges are at fault – to their defense new buildings, technology, and beautification for your sake costs a great deal of money. It is a moot point by now anyway, and the fact of the matter is that we really did go from easily affordable to retirement-hindering in one generation; and now it is an issue that families really ought to deal with. Through even some simple planning strategies they are able to save thousands of dollars today so they can earn hundreds of thousands at retirement.

Anyway, in establishing the framework of our study one of the points we wanted to consider was the actual size of the student body graduating high school and entering college. I know in school often times you wonder why you are even having to learn about even basic mathematics. Like really, if you are going to be a a painter, or a brick-layer, or a writer – why do you even need to know percents? Well, in real life pretty much any project involving business will necessitate the use of fractions to describe the growth or decline of something.

In this case, we really have three groups of students we must study to make this piece complete. We want the number of students in a senior class, the number of students of that senior class who are awarded diplomas, and of those how many move on to college. I won’t go into all the details but to say that according to the United States Census, we are able to construct the following chart (numbers in Millions, “Sen” represents the total seniors in the senior class, “Grad” represents how many graduate, and “Col” represents how many moved on to college.):

Year    Sen    Grad    Col
2004    —-    —-    1.8
2005    —-    2.8     —-
2006    3.18   —-    —-
2007    3.45   —-    —-
2008    —-    —-   —-

There really is nothing I can go on except to see that from 2006 to 2007 the number of seniors rose by 8.5%  (3.18 * 1.085 = 3.45).  In looking at the population rates, they have remained relatively similar from year to year, so I factored the same population growth moving into the future and into the past:

 Year    Sen    Grad    Col
2004    2.70    —-    1.8
2005    2.93    2.8     —-
2006    3.18   —-    —-
2007    3.45   —-    —-
2008    3.74    —-   —-

This gave me a scaling factor that relates the number of students that make it to their senior year without dropping out to the number of diplomas awarded. (95.53%), which ultimately led me to a scaling factor relating to the 2004 number of students who entered college as a freshman (69.74%):

  Year    Sen    Grad    Col
2004    2.70    2.58    1.8
2005    2.93    2.8     1.95
2006    3.18   3.04    2.12
2007    3.45   3.30      2.3
2008    3.74    3.58      2.49

Wow!  This year you will be entering college with 2.5 Million other students!  That’s more than double what I graduated with!  Is it any wonder that colleges are able to charge the astronomical rates that they do?  Your competition is as steep as ever, and this is a real world example (that even relates to you) on why percents might matter.  Study hard and stay right with school.  Life isn’t easy street and your competition is going to include the hundreds of millions of China and India by the time you graduate college.  Good luck.

– Andrew Turner

www.thinkarchimedes.com