The SAT being a help to low-income students shows how messed up the US high school system is. Normally standardized tests hurt low-income students because they require extra-curricular resources to do well on. In the US they hurt poor students less because the GPA system is so badly broken. AP courses are not offered in the poorest schools but offer such large bonuses to GPA that a 4.0 GPA is considered very poor for applying to university. A student can literally have a perfect GPA in the best courses offered by their school and be considered a very poor applicant academically.