<p>It is true that prep plays a huge role when it comes to the SATs, but, as the collegeboard itself states, there is only so much improvement one can make on his scores. An idiot could prep 5 hours a day for a year, but he will not score above a 2100; likewise, the brilliant test-taker will never score below a 2100 even if he hadn't preped at all.</p>
<p>Either you've got the gray matter, or you don't. It's as simple as that.</p>
<p>No, it's more a question of whether you have the grey matter AND good test taking skills.</p>
<p>Again, I am not denying that being properly prepared for the SAT (i.e. having test-taking skills and being comfortable with the types of questions in advance) is very important. But intelligence is the core of success. If this was not the case, colleges (especially Harvard) wouldn't be relying on it as an indicator of ability.</p>
<p>Sorry but aptitude test is not the same as an intelligence test. It measures your ability to solve problems, read, and write.</p>
<p>Intelligence and the "ability to solve problems, read, and write" seem to correlate quite well, do they not?</p>
<p>
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Sorry but aptitude test is not the same as an intelligence test.
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</p>
<p>That's an example of the "naming fallacy." In fact, the considered conclusion of the late Professor Julian Stanley, who may have been personally acquainted with more high-IQ young people than any other researcher, was that IQ tests and the SAT I both sort test-takers along a dimension that he labeled "scholastic aptitude." As he and his co-author Kenneth Hopkins put it, </p>
<p>
[quote]
Most authorities feel that current intelligence tests are more aptly described as "scholastic aptitude" tests because they are so highly related to academic performance, although current use suggests that the term intelligence test is going to be with us for some time. This reservation is based not on the opinion that intelligence tests do not reflect intelligence but on the belief that there are other kinds of intelligence that are not reflected in current tests; the term intelligence is too inclusive.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And of course this distinction goes back to Lewis Terman, author of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, who wrote, in 1937: </p>
<p>
[quote]
There are, however, certain characteristics of age scores with which the reader should be familiar. For one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that the true mental age as we have used it refers to the mental age on a particular intelligence test. A subject's mental age in this sense may not coincide with the age score he would make in tests of musical ability, mechanical ability, social adjustment, etc. A subject has, strictly speaking, a number of mental ages; we are here concerned only with that which depends on the abilities tested by the new Stanford-Binet scales.
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</p>
<p>The Harvard admission officers are smart enough (ahem) to know that they need information about applicants other than proxies for the applicants' IQ scores (and the SAT I is a very good proxy for an IQ score) to choose a class that will succeed at Harvard and bring credit to alma mater for years afterward. That is why the debate in this thread is so unrelated to the concerns of real-world applicants and students at Harvard. What Harvard is all about is what you do with your potential, not merely how much raw potential you have.</p>
<p>That's absolutely true, Tokenadult. Having potential alone isn't enough; you have to show that you have the drive to realize that potential and go far in life. But you still need to have potential to realize... and our argument is over whether the SAT is a true indicator of ability/intelligence/potential or not. So the debate is very much relevant.</p>
<p>Yeah Harvard obviously needs a way to judge its applicants numerically.</p>
<p>I guess intelligence can manifest itself in many ways. And the SAT can measure some of those intelligences, but not all! That's why I have a problem with it. I scored fairly high myself on the SAT, but I know other very intelligent people with higher iq's than myself (i have 140) that get merely average SAT scores.</p>
<p>And another thing--I scored much higher on the verbal section of my IQ test. However, I absolutely hate humanities and english and would much rather be in a quantitative field.</p>
<p>I guess my real problem is that I don't think any standardized test can measure my abilities.</p>
<p>This article -- <a href="http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.23/01-creativity.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.23/01-creativity.html</a> -- states that the average IQ of Harvard students (college?) is 130 -- strong but hardly stratospheric. In this article --<a href="http://www.college.harvard.edu/deans_office/dean_lewis/annualreport2001/annual_report_2001.html">http://www.college.harvard.edu/deans_office/dean_lewis/annualreport2001/annual_report_2001.html</a> -- you will find the average SAT of Harvard students for the last 20 years or so. Most recently, the average was nearly 1,500 -- which is stratospheric. So this suggests that to get a high SAT, you don't necessarily need a high IQ. Mensa apparently thinks so, because it dropped the SAT as a substitute for IQ.</p>
<p>Here's how to figure it out.</p>
<p>The strongest correlation between IQ and the SAT is on the verbal section of the SAT.</p>
<p>Almost all the studies that demonstrate this connection are based on the SAT that existed up until the early 1990s. The subsequent version of the SAT involved a signficiant renorming. On the verbal section, the person who got a 730 or above on the old test now received an 800. The current average Harvard student's verbal SAT of say 740 would equal 680 on the old SAT or 1.8 standard deviations. 1.8 multiplied by 15 points per standard diviation equals approximately 27 points. So a Harvard student's IQ would be approximately 127 by this calculation.</p>
<p>Of course, all of that depends on believing in the concept of IQ.</p>
<p>If you would like a quick tour through various views of the SAT-IQ debate, here is good link:
<a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/test/views.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/test/views.html</a></p>
<p>Everyone here is forgetting that it is very unlikely that the NATIONAL population mean score on the SAT is the same as the mean score for the self-selected group of college-bound high school students who take the SAT. (That's an empirical question, but that is the way to bet in the absence of a study of SAT scores in a national norming population.) And just about everyone also is forgetting the point I have already made above: each test sorts its group of test-takers into a DIFFERENT rank order, so the most one can say is that as a group average all the test-takers with an SAT score of, say, 640 will have a range of IQ scores that will be centered around [whatever IQ score it is, on whatever brand of IQ test is being compared] but also include higher and lower IQ scores. AT THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL, you can't predict an IQ score with good accuracy knowing only someone's SAT score. </p>
<p>I'm surprised, by the way, that no one here has yet mentioned the Study</a> of Exceptional Talent, the study population of which includes alumni of a variety of schools.</p>
<p>Tokenadult, your point is moot.
No one here is saying that, given one's SAT score, an exact IQ score can be inferred. To do this would yield inaccurate estimations simply because any particular person can score a range of SAT scores in many different sittings. So no one is arguing with you there. Matching SAT scores and IQ scores must be done in ranges.</p>
<p>But this doesn't change the fact that the SAT does offer, within limits, indication of cognitive ability. It is pretty safe to say that someone who scored a 2000 will not later score a 2300, even if significantly better preparation was done before the second sitting. Rarely can preparation raise your composite score by more than 100 points or so. By the same token, someone who scored a 2300 is unlikely to score a 2100 in a second sitting. </p>
<p>That is why Harvard and the gang rely on the SAT so heavily in the admissions process. True, in the eyes of the adcom a 2300+ is not enough to prove true potential. But a 2000 sure is enough to disprove it.</p>
<p>I went from a 1280 (10th) (1920 on the new SAT) to a 2320 (11th) with minimal prep. It's definately not impossible to raise your score by 400 points.</p>
<p>People can and do raise their score hundreds of points. I did, and back in the days when it was considered more of an IQ test than it is now. Harvard and other schools demand high SATs not because they're intrinsically revealing, but because they get so many applicants that have them. When it comes to IQ and academic potential, the only advantage the SAT has is that it's a standard measure -- not that it's a good one. (When it comes to testing creativity and imagination -- two qualities that surely figure in academic and intellectual achievement -- the SAT is worthless. The very format of it -- multiple choice, with one correct answer -- is artificial and silly. The best you can say about it is that while a high score might indicate potential, a low score by no means disproves it.)</p>
<p>"I went from a 1280 (10th) (1920 on the new SAT) to a 2320 (11th) with minimal prep. It's definately not impossible to raise your score by 400 points."</p>
<p>That means you hadn't even looked at the SAT before you took it in the 10th grade and scored a 1280. The fact that you raised your score by 400 points with minimal prep shows you didn't do your best the first time.</p>
<p>The correlation between SAT scores and IQ might be strong, but I don't think that one causes another, since one can study for the SATs. I would guess the IQ's of Harvard students are only slightly above average. This is because:
a) Those that get into Harvard on their own merits do so because of a combination of activities, that don't all require a high IQ.
b) An amazingly high IQ is not needed to perform well in school, which is another academic factor taken into account by colleges.
c) Not everyone gets into Harvard based on their own merits.</p>
<p>I second the 1.5-2 SD above the mean guess. Typical post-college careers of Harvard students are fields in which most people are 1.5-2 SD. So that's as good a guess as any. </p>
<p>I would bet that the faculty IQ is higher than the student IQ.</p>
<p>Remember that this is to some extent under Harvard's control. It could select mainly for estimated g, or look among students with high enough g for other qualities that seem appealing. The latter approach might lower the overall average IQ, but raise the level of subsequent career sucess.</p>
<p>Given the limitations of IQ in predicting life sucess, even in highly g-dependent fields, why is the Harvard undergrad IQ interesting?</p>
<p>
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Everyone here is forgetting that it is very unlikely that the NATIONAL population mean score on the SAT is the same as the mean score for the self-selected group of college-bound high school students who take the SAT.
[/quote]
They occasionally take a national sample to correct the norm for this effect.</p>
<p>afan, are you sure that the College Board gives SAT I tests to a NATIONALLY representative sample of all kids of the relevant age, college-bound or not? Where is such a study published?</p>