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In 2005, 153,132 Black Americans took the SAT test.
They made up 10.4 percent of all SAT test takers. But only 1,132 Black college-bound students scored 700 or above on the math SAT and only 1,205 scored at least 700 on the verbal SAT.
Nationally, more than 100,000 students of all races scored 700 or above on the math SAT and 78,025 students scored 700 or above on the verbal SAT. Thus, in this top-scoring category of all SAT test takers, Blacks made up only 1.1 percent of the students scoring 700 or higher on the math test and only 1.5 percent of the students scoring 700 or higher on the verbal SAT.

If we eliminate Asians and other minorities from the statistics and compare just White and Black students, we find that 5.8 percent of all White SAT test takers scored 700 or above on the verbal portion of the test. But only 0.79 percent of all Black SAT test takers scored at this level. Therefore, Whites were more than seven times as likely as Blacks to score 700 or above on the verbal SAT. Overall, there are more than 39 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored at least 700 on the verbal SAT.

On the math SAT, only 0.7 percent of all Black test takers scored at least 700 compared to 6.3 percent of all White test takers. Thus, Whites were nine times as likely as Blacks to score 700 or above on the math SAT. Overall, there were 45 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored 700 or above on the math SAT.

If we raise the top-scoring threshold to students scoring 750 or above on both the math and verbal SAT — a level equal to the mean score of students entering the nation's most selective colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, and CalTech — we find that in the entire country 244 Blacks scored 750 or above on the math SAT and 363 Black students scored 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Nationwide, 33,841 students scored at least 750 on the math test and 30,479 scored at least 750 on the verbal SAT. Therefore, Black students made up 0.7 percent of the test takers who scored 750 or above on the math test and 1.2 percent of all test takers who scored 750 or above on the verbal section.

Once again, if we eliminate Asians and other minorities from the calculations and compare only Blacks and Whites, we find that 0.2 percent of all Black test takers scored 750 or above on the verbal SAT compared to 2.2 percent of all White test takers. Thus, Whites were 11 times as likely as Blacks to score 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Overall, there were 49 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored at or above the 750 level.

On the math SAT, only 0.16 percent of all Black test takers scored 750 or above compared to 1.8 percent of White test takers. Thus, Whites were more than 11 times as likely as Blacks to score 750 or above on the math SAT. Overall, there were more than 61 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored 750 or above on the math section of the SAT.

In a race-neutral competition for the approximately 50,000 places for first-year students at the nation's 25 top-ranked universities, high-scoring Blacks would be buried by a huge mountain of high-scoring non-Black students. Today, under prevailing affirmative-action admissions policies there are about 3,000 Black first-year students matriculating at these 25 high-ranking universities, about 6 percent of all first-year students at these institutions. But if these schools operated under a strict race-neutral admissions policy where SAT scores were the most important qualifying yardstick, these universities could fill their freshman classes almost exclusively with students who score at the very top of the SAT scoring scale. As shown previously, Black students make up at best between 1 and 2 percent of these high-scoring groups.