<p>and this debate is over what intelligence is.</p>
<p>and I think its unfair in a debate to go:</p>
<p>“you don’t have any authority”
“well your only argument is that smart people agree with you”</p>
<p>
I prefer to stick to the traditional definition of intelligence in which it is essentially equivalent to IQ. Synthetic/creative and practical/streetsmart abilities are both equally important (I would argue that the latter is actually more important than anything else), but I wouldn’t consider them “intelligence” in a normal scope.</p>
<p>You seem to have ignored the entire point behind post #30. I’m not saying that abilities outside of IQ aren’t valuable or useful. They just aren’t intelligence. Your entire position seems to be constructed on the shaky idea that intelligence=good and unintelligence=bad. Do you equate athletic ability with intelligence?
Seriously? Opposition is invalid because there is always opposition? Does that mean that every statement is automatically valid?</p>
<p>I already explained my position with regards to abilities outside the scope of intelligence.</p>
<p>More to come…</p>
<p>@sclindsay: My problem is that “smart people” don’t necessarily agree with you. None of your citations support the idea that all the good stuff you talk about is equivalent to intelligence.</p>
<p>Since you’re wrong by my definition, let’s examine the issue using yours. I think Sternberg’s triarchal theory of intelligence does a reasonable job of balancing your concerns: [url=<a href=“http://www.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/learning/sternb1.htm]robertsternberg[/url”>http://www.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/learning/sternb1.htm]robertsternberg[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Analytical intelligence is obviously measured by the SAT. Creativity isn’t, but it’s obviously rather difficult to standardize novelty and in any case most creative endeavors will bring in an element of subjectivity. Practical intelligence is measured to the extent that someone who decides that a high SAT score is necessary may be able to significantly increase their score through hard work studying.</p>
<p>However, the question of whether the SAT is “a complete measure of intelligence” is quite frankly a stupid one. The real question is whether the SAT is a valuable tool that measures traits worthy of consideration on at least some level in college admissions and scholarship consideration. I think I’ve provided significant evidence that this is the case.</p>
<p>“Intelligence” cannot be quantified, yet an IQ test attempts to quantify it (the reason it is defunct in many psychological circles). The SAT was designed to be a type of IQ test, but the ACT was not (“aptitude” vs. “achievement”).</p>
<p>That said, in this thread’s original post, the OP seemed to assign “intelligence” certain qualities, which I’m sure are probably qualities the OP sees him/herself as having. Doesn’t lend a lot of validity to an argument. </p>
<p>To another degree, IQ tests could be defunct with the abandonment of the concept of intelligence. Or at least this over-reaching concept that it is regarded as. Want to call intelligence “the ability to solve certain logical problems”? Go for it.</p>
<p>Oh, and when I said that the SAT was intended to be an IQ test, I don’t mean that it succeeded. You can’t study to raise your intelligence (or the formless concept/characteristic assigned the ill-fitting term “intelligence”).</p>
<p>The trend I generally see is that people with high IQ scores like to brag about how intelligent they are, and will defend the validity of IQ tests because they see it as validating this wonderful characteristic they always knew (thought) they had. People with low IQ scores will attack the IQ test, to protect their self-esteem, which they feel was wronged by a stupid test. Both these hypothetical people are equally biased in a fairly “unintelligent” (if such a thing exists) way. Before you reply with “I have a high IQ and still don’t like the IQ test!”, remember 4 things: 1.) note that I said “trend”, not universal truth. 2.) JUST my experience, not a universal trend. 3.) good for you. 4.) no way to prove it.</p>
<p>I was in the “gifted” program in elementary (4-5) and middle (6-8) school. Looking back, they fed the kids a bunch of BS about how much smarter they were (I mean really, “gifted”? That’s pretty hilarious, from a psychological perspective), and most kids got REALLY full of themselves. Lots of “My IQ is this, what’s your IQ?”</p>
<p>Intelligence tests, I must also add, have a racial, socioeconomic, and societal bias. African tribesman who survive and thrive very well, who seem quite intelligent to those conversing with them, show up with “■■■■■■■■” IQs. Example: Some questions can only be answered by people who have lived with square windows all their lives. It has to do with the way you perceive things. Example2: Words and concepts used to favor the affluent when it comes to understanding questions.</p>
<p>IQ tests, as a whole, have had a fairly negative impact on history. Eugenics, racism, castration of people with low IQs, predetermination of a child’s place in society, et cetera. Granted, nowadays, they have little impact beyond making people feel good/bad about themselves and for admittance into exclusive vanity clubs. However, programs like the “gifted” program I described show a negative impact, as many schools focus more resources and teach in a more engaging/informed way to these students, showing favoritism and (perhaps) having an adverse effect on education.</p>
<p>As for the SAT/ACT, they are there to measure future/past performance in college/high school. Not so much intelligence. You can study for them and improve your grade. So, in a way, they measure persistence (for some people, others can’t raise their score even with studying).</p>
<p>There’s my view on the matter. As intelectual as I’ll get. (Yes, Firefox, I know that’s spelled wrong. No, I did think it was intentional irony until the OP admitted to a typo. Yes, Firefox, that is funny. No, other people, I’m not crazy.)</p>
<p>I feel like I’m just watching a circle of guys taking turns slugging a man over the head with baseball bats. I’m reading this with an air of amusement and pity, almost akin to watching a gladiator try to fight off lions.</p>
<p>I think that there are people that honestly believe that the SAT and IQ tests are measurements of complete intelligence. I think they can be used as a tool appropiately, but they should be ballanced with some type of measurement of things like creativity. </p>
<p>I think the SAT would be far better if there were a section that had problems, and short essay solutions to those problems. obviously that will never happen because grading would be subjective, and it would take too long to grade. </p>
<p>I think that theory does a good job of ballancing Binet and Gardner, and probably closer to what I actually believe, however does not carry the backing that gardner does, and for the opposition, I didn’t mean to belittle its merrits, just its numbers. </p>
<p>I think my quotes were relevant, perhaps I should have explained them, but since you probably won’t see the validity of them anyway, I won’t bother. but I could do it if you really want me to.</p>
<p>and as for intelligence I believe that there is more to it than simply being able to reason on papersince no one is going to accept the merrits of what I’m saying (I’m going to gander a guess that it has something to do with personal bias as Billymc said, and yes I am bias, we’re all biased towards defending our pressious little egos that say we are Intelligent) I’m not going to bother to say it.</p>
<p>Just consider things like Idiot-Savant syndrome, like the tendency for some people with Down Syndrome to be extremely gifted in music, like Andy Warhol and like the personal examples of smart stupid people, and stupid smart people. I will only say this, there is more to it than IQ</p>
<p>I agree with what the OP is saying, but his statement isn’t complete. The SAT does measure a certain part of intelligence, and I concede that it isn’t entirely accurate, but it is a good rough measure. I also completely agree with you that creativity is just as important when it comes to intelligence. However, this quality is very difficult to actually measure; the error in such a test would dwarf whatever error there is in the SAT.</p>
<p>Luckily, colleges look at stuff beyond the SAT which give a general idea of how creative their applicants are. They then use the SAT to corroborate those merits and thus admit them. Granted, the system would have thrown out prodigies like Warhol, but that’s the cost of getting as many good students as you can as efficiently as you can. I mean, the colleges are scanning for not only creative people, but also for people who can mechanically do a brilliant job at responding to new situations.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t fully agree with the system as it is, but I don’t see how it could be practically improved to the OP’s standards. There is simply no way to do it short of sending everyone to Harvard or creating a test that takes 3 years to grade.</p>
<p>I can see why you’re bitter about the SAT and the ACT.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Get on those grammar rules! :D</p>
<p>universities shouldnt enroll students simply based on Intelligence…You know many clever people just do not work hard</p>
<p>In response to the above, I think universities should enroll students primarily, if not solely on “intelligence”, whatever that may mean (which I believe is some combination of ingenuity, analytical ability, and logic). The SAT (or ACT), however, is hardly a perfect measure of this (IQ tests aren’t that great, either). The whole idea of a test being “studiable” (yeah, not a real word, but I hope you get my message), makes it an awful metric on which to base one’s intelligence. You can’t make yourself smarter, so a test of intelligence shouldn’t allow you to artificially inflate your score through studying. At the very least, studying specifically for these exams should be banned, in order to get a better sense of a person’s pure intellect.
Still, multiple-choice testing (and formulaic, rubric-based writing), are in and of themselves poor measures of intelligence. Being able to apply a grammar rule across numerous sentences, or a formula across numerous math problems hardly shows one’s ability to “adapt to new situations” or “reason and apply” complex concepts. At the very best, these tests can study the basic knowledge everyone should have before entering college, not their overall intelligence.
A much better much standardized test would be primarily written, with students expected to explain their answers to questions on analysis of passages, and work through how an advanced mathematics problem could be worked through. Even vocabulary could be tested–though not by the rote memorization required by today’s tests, but rather seeing how well someone can understand context and tone to find the meaning of a word completely unknown to them. Finally, time limits should be significantly longer, as being able to speed through work is not necessarily a sign of intelligence. However, this test would be way too subjective and time-consuming to grade on a magnitude of millions of test-takers a year, but a guy can dream, right?</p>
<p>(Pardon the long-winded response, I find standardized testing to be a rather interesting topic. Yeah, I’m weird like that.)</p>
<p>I am so smart. S-M-R-T.</p>
<p>
Why? How does that grade creativity? Just look at the prep guides for the SAT essay in the status quo - people memorize canned example paragraphs. What makes your situation novel?
I’m not going to make you explain your views, but you can’t pretend that your position holds any water. Explaining yourself by means of refusing to explain yourself doesn’t accomplish much.
Repetition doesn’t make your point any less wrong. I agree that all of these people have superb abilities in one way or another, but that doesn’t say anything at all about why they should be considered intelligent.</p>
<p>This is an interesting article, but it’s only somewhat relevant:[Why</a> America Needs the SAT](<a href=“http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/satlogic.htm]Why”>http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/satlogic.htm)</p>
<p>The funny thing about calling the SAT and aptitude test and the ACT and achievement test is that they are both very similar. They test basically the same things. The only difference is semantics.</p>
<p>The main problem is that your argument is completely based off of the definition of intelligence. While many people can be excellent at something, that does not mean they have intelligence. Intelligence quite simply reasoning ability. The SAT is only a very rough measure of this. I would like to emphasize my personal view, that others share (such as in the article), that the SAT is a very good indicator of basic skills necessary for college. Typically, with little practice, basic skill is proportional to intelligence. This can be skewed, but most people don’t practice enough to do so. </p>
<p>The SAT alone is not a complete measure of intelligence, but it is a strong indicator of it. Most “intelligent” probably have high SAT scores ( and ACT scores; the test are very similar). </p>
<p>SAT scores alone are not a complete measure of intelligence. They are merely a strong predictor of it.</p>
<p>The SAT is not a complete measure of intelligence, obviously. But intelligence in one area is typically indicative of it in another area. Also, do not confuse brilliance for intelligence. Musical ability is not intelligence. It is musical ability creativity, not intelligence. “Idiot savants,” also known as brilliant guys with low IQs, are like that because they cannot comprehend things as well. Memory is not intelligence. Reasoning ability is.</p>
<p>I want to make a philosophic point.</p>
<p>Look at all the great works of literature of the last thousand years, weather it’d be Dante’s Divine Comedy, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, or Macbeth or whatever or even TS Elliott’s Waist land or Orwell’s 1984. Was it the intelligence measured by the SAT that made these works great, or was it rather their ability to express ideas, new and old, in new creative ways?</p>
<p>Look at all the great political leaders of the last thousand years. look at Henry IV (France), John Locke, James Madison, Winston Churchill, Thomas Moore and whoever else you want to throw in there. Was it their SAT intelligence or their ability to reason morally and practically about the despair of the condition of the world that they lived in?</p>
<p>Look at the great men of science. Tesla, Da Vinci, Einstein, Edison, Pascal, whoever. Was it their SAT intelligence, or their ability to challenge the known world, even in the face of people calling them alchemist and scum?</p>
<p>Either it is not intelligence that has advanced the world, or intelligence is broader than what the SAT measures. Because of everything I have learned in AP Psych, and everything teachers have instilled in me since kindergarten, I believe the latter.</p>
<p>
First, you still haven’t given any reason to believe that the qualities you describe are components of intelligence. But more to the point, your post offers no new advocacy. You previously suggested adding additional free response sections to the SAT. I provided a response and you dropped the argument.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m missing something here, but I honestly don’t see a point to your post. What are you trying to say?
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!</p>
<p>^ You also have to remember that those people are generally the exception. The types of people who create new stuff in science all the time have very high IQ’s as measured by these tests, so they wouldn’t have been thrown out. Granted, that doesn’t mean that a high SAT means that they will do something great, but you’re making it sound like every important person had a low IQ. For Tesla, that simply wasn’t true. For Bill Gates, that simply isn’t true. For people like Dante or Shakespeare or Eliot, the SAT wasn’t created back then… For all we know they could have scored magnificently given the chance.</p>
<p>You also have to look at the other characters that moved history. Einstein was very good at the kind of reasoning measured in the math section in the SAT. As was Newton, as were the people who created RSA encryption. You’re tending to pull a lot of examples from the liberal arts and fail to remember that it’s more scientific institutions who put more weight on these tests. You can still go to Juilliard School without a great SAT; in fact, I don’t think they even consider that test.</p>
<p>In summary, I’d like to add that you are pretending that these exceptions in science are single figures. Science is largely advanced through the actions and research of many, which is actually performed more efficiently by people who can solve logical problems on the spot. I doubt Andy Warhol would be able to formulate a good experiment in a matter of minutes, yet I don’t think that that’s important at all. The people who are intelligent in other aspects of their mind will find a way to express themselves and go to institutions where that kind of creativity is most valued.</p>
<p>if you honestly believe that why haven’t you been making that argument instead of trying to tare down mine? </p>
<p>And as for the Free Response you can memorize canned paragraphs but they won’t be specific to the prompt. It shouldn’t be graded on how you say what you say. It should graded based on what you say.</p>
<p>Yes they have High IQs but that is not what made them great.</p>
<p>^ I said that. However, I would say that some amount of the knowledge measured in standardized tests is a necessary condition to making those kinds of scientific discoveries. You are trying to point out that it is not sufficient, which I agree with. That’s why colleges look at other parts of the application. However, a college should not merely overlook an assessment which will help weed out the people who would frankly sink in some of the classes. It’s similar to a physical test before being authorized to fight in the army. The physical test will not ensure that the soldier is patriotic, brave, or that he will be useful. However, if he does not pass the physical test, he will almost definitely reach major difficulties when it comes to the battle.</p>
<p>
I am advocating for the status quo. You’re the one who is complaining and asking for change.
- CC conventional wisdom suggests that this method works: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/645763-how-write-12-essay-just-10-days.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/645763-how-write-12-essay-just-10-days.html</a></p>
<ol>
<li><p>I’m still not clear on how a free response question encourages divergent thinking. A well-designed multiple choice question can still be solved in many ways.</p></li>
<li><p>Your approach brings in a greater element of subjectivity and unpredictability, potentially damaging the reliability of the examination.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I would be very interested to see a response to the excellent article linked to in post #53.</p>