<p>Let me take an extreme example. Consider the poor IDIOT who came LAST in the International Maths Olympiad. What an idiot he must be - of course not. </p>
<p>So, your “plain common sense reasoning” makes no sense when we take into account selection bias (which you still don’t seem to understand?)</p>
<p>[Let</a> me google that for you](<a href=“LMGTFY - Let Me Google That For You”>LMGTFY - Let Me Google That For You)</p>
<p>“If you submit a score in which over 60% of applicants in the nation are going to have a higher score”
NO
60% of TEST TAKERS, not applicants. And this is where my extreme IMO example is important - is it better to be beaten by 3000 people taking SAT 2 physics (think my numbers are right here) and be in the 50th percentile or to be beaten by 70 000 people to be in the 50th percentile in eng lit. Also note that the average physics taker will be better at physics that the average lit taker at lit (see self selection again). So that is why these 2 achievements may be worthy of the same score.</p>
<p>5% of 140 000 people taking eng lit > 50% of 6000 people taking physics.</p>
<p>Percentiles are misleading. Cboard corrects fully for this. The number is all that matters. But I guess you will not be coming back to this thread because I am still holding to my ‘off base’ argument and it will be a ‘waist’ of your time. </p>
<p>Actually maybe it is better to close it here. OP’s question has been answered and this doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. If you have something interesting then I would be interested but I guess from here on in we would be just re hashing old arguments.</p>
<p>Happy new year</p>