<p>Nothing with the SAT is fair, some students with much potential will look like they don’t have any and others with high SAT’s might not do very well in college. (I’ve seen both)
I don’t know percentages but I know there are some students that rise above the numbers. When Cedric Jennings was let into Brown with a 980 SAT (mostly math) he got through his first year without help, but struggled with certain writing papers. He excelled in math and actually took a harder final exam than his class, (this professor was ahead of his professors class) and got an A. He graduated from Brown with a B+ and went on to 2 other Ivy league schools.
I remember reading on these boards years ago, not very nice comments geared to a female student going to an Ivy league with a less than “their average” score. She was first generation, public school, but did some wonderful things and had challenging classes for her school. She was doing well, last I heard, but the hateful comments sent her way, asking her if she was “ashamed” to be at the bottom of the pool, etc. was not needed. If the process to get into a school makes you that crazy, something is wrong with the system and the applilcant.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I will and I have. That is, whatever you can get by attending a test prep course you can get better for free. Test prep courses are generally a waste of the student’s family’s money. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/447748-do-you-really-believe-expensive-test-prep-courses.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/447748-do-you-really-believe-expensive-test-prep-courses.html</a></p>
<p>Agreed. The best prep is available to everyone. Just go to Your Local Public Library to borrow the Blue Book and do all the practice tests. That is how my children got 2400 at beginning of their Junior year.</p>
<p>I spoke with an admissions rep at Bowdoin, which is SAT-optional yet one of my top choices (I have good SATs and mediocre grades). She was very frank and, at least to someone like me, very encouraging. She admitted:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Those students who do not submit test scores have a significantly lower admit rate. Now, whether this is because Bowdoin is a little suspicious when test scores are not sent in or if it is because those who don’t send in scores are less likely to be good applicants in other respects is unknown.</p></li>
<li><p>For those students who DO submit test scores, she tells me the score matters to Bowdoin just as much as any non-test-optional school.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So, if you have a 2400, it really does help. If you have a 1700, if you don’t send scores, it MIGHT hurt; if you do send scores, it WILL DEFINITELY hurt your chances.</p>
<p>Overall, I get the impression that the main reason why colleges go SAT-optional is because they want to increase applicants and cut admit rates.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>This suggests that, for Bowdoin at least and I suspect for a of of other test-optional schools too, since they use the test results if given, they see real value in the test. In other words, going test-optional was really a PR stunt meant to make them look flexible, caring, and progressive rather than cold and numbers-driven. But in reality they are hoping that nearly all the applicants take the test anyway, because the scores provide valuable information.</p>
<p>To those who think that the wealthy benefit from tutoring on SATs/ACTs: I have a friend who sent their 2 children to inner city schools. They were offered both free and low cost tutoring in their inner city high school. This was not just for SAT I, but SAT II, and AP exams. Our children attend a suburban high school from a wealthier community. Although we live within this wealthy zip code, we are middle class, and there are students from low income families who attend our public high school as well. Our high school does not offer any tutoring for SATs, ACTs, SAT IIs, or AP exams. Either you pay privately, you walk in cold, or self prep. My point is that coming from a low income family does not necessarily deny access to tutoring. It might, and it might not. The kiddo from a middle class family, or even wealthy family might be the one without tutoring. </p>
<p>I do think that standardized tests are important. It can put grades into perspective. I am saying this as a parent of a child who tests better than performance in a classroom, and as the parent of a child who performs far better than standardized tests would ever indicate.</p>
<p>That’s true northeastmom, but some of that “free tutoring” is horrible. My girls inner city high school offers free SAT verbal tutoring by a couple of teachers, but what they cover and how they do it is a very mixed bag…most students don’t benefit from it very much. I concede though that other schools might be much better. One thing they do have is a few dedicated teachers that will come in starting in January for Sat. morning classes to help with the AP exams. Of course you have to pick which one, they are all at the same time, but it helps “extend the classroom” a bit.
I have twins, that pretty much echo each other in grades, they both do well, have some of the best teachers in their school, but always differ on the PSAT and other tests. One just fades when an exam goes on more than an hour or two. I hope she will do better on the AP or SATll’s but we will see. Maybe with practice, her stamina will increase, but they are an example to me that not all students show their true ability on SAT exams.
When my son first took it, he had a student he used to tutor do a little better than he did, it just wasn’t a good fit. He did bring it up a bit and took the ACT also, but he doesn’t feel it reflected his ability in school and is very proud of his work in college. </p>
<p>I do think as you stated, not knowing every high school, it would be hard to judge on just GPA, but that is why some SAT optional colleges like a few graded papers and recomendations. I also think that the colleges that award merit scholarships to optional students show they mean what they say vs the ones that say you can’t get one without an SAT score.</p>
<p>In reply to Chaucer,</p>
<p>1) If two people of equal intelligence take the SAT and one has a solid background in high school geometry while the other comes from crappy school system X and doesn’t, you mean to say that both have an equal chance of getting geometry questions right? That’s absurd. Sure, the SAT is MORE correlated to intelligence than, for instance, the SAT IIs, AP exams, or high school final exams. It incorporates questions that cater to reasoning, but not all of its questions do. The writing section is a perfect example. It is a test of whether or not you know the rules of standard English and can apply them. But, of course, the test implies that you know all the nuances and intricacies of the rules of standard English. Many people who don’t grow up in bilingual households take this for granted.</p>
<p>2) I apologize if my usage of the term “old money” confused you. Clearly we are not referring to trust fund babies here, but people who directly benefit from their family’s wealth. This comes in the form of property, hard money itself, and, most pertinent to this discussion, exposure to education. The original poster mistakenly assumes that high-paying jobs are reflections of intelligence alone. It is more accurate to say that they are reflections of education, which is not necessarily correlated to intelligence. (Such a correlation has strengthened only recently).</p>
<p>3) You refer to some psychologists here, but not all. The notion that intelligence is 80% heritable is by no means accepted across the scientific community, or even by a majority. </p>
<p>4) Again I apologize if I confused you. I meant test prep as any form of preparation for the test. I did not in any way refer to commercial test prep of any kind. Preparing for the SAT raises scores, which is not characteristic of tests measuring intelligence. Preparation, after all, does not change your intelligence.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I did not say test prep courses, I was referring to test preparation itself, in whatever form someone chooses to acquire it. I would be surprised to hear of someone disagreeing that cold test-takers don’t do as well as people who practice. This concept makes the SAT, by definition, not solely based on intelligence.</p>
<p>The problem with SAT-IQ correlation studies is that the SAT is not a pinpoint accurate measure of academic ability, nor does it claim to be. According to college board, one’s “score range” is ± 30 points (unless above 770) of one’s score; and this is a more accurate reflection of one’s abilities. See, a guy with an SAT score of, say, twenty points less than someone else may indeed have a slightly higher IQ. That is within the “margin of error” of the test. However, broad score ranges correlate VERY highly with IQ, say ranges of 100 points 1510-1600, 1410-1500, 1310-1400, etc. or 200 points 1410-1600, 1210-1400, etc. (out of 1600)</p>
<p>This is not to say IQ is a true indicator of shall I say intellectual intelligence or potential, but it is the most heavily researched standard wehave.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Because you referred to the scientific community in your reply, I’ll point to what some members of the scientific community say in contradiction to this statement of yours. </p>
<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence: David Perkins: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Outsmarting-IQ-Emerging-Learnable-Intelligence/dp/0029252121]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Outsmarting-IQ-Emerging-Learnable-Intelligence/dp/0029252121) </p>
<p>[Why</a> Smart People Can be So Stupid - Google Book Search](<a href=“Why Smart People Can be So Stupid - Google Books”>Why Smart People Can be So Stupid - Google Books) </p>
<p>[Amazon.ca:</a> Learning Intelligence: Cognitive Acceleration across the curriculum from 5 to 15 Years: Michael Shayer, Phillip Adey: Books](<a href=“Amazon.ca”>Amazon.ca) </p>
<p>[STANFORD</a> Magazine: March/April 2007 > Features > Mind-set Research](<a href=“http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/features/dweck.html]STANFORD”>http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/features/dweck.html)</p>
<p>nooooo…I NEEDED this! my GPA is the biggest thing wrong with my admissions profile :(</p>
<p>Kaylee relax, the Boston Globe is confused.</p>
<p>ChoklitRain- I did mean ambiguous. Excuse my grammar and spelling in that post. I was half-asleep. I find the questions on the SAT Critical Reading section to be pretty ridiculous and I scored very well on it. I do think that the ACT reading section is a lot more appropriate for measuring reading skills. I was simply questioning how does this test show potential for success in college? I really don’t see how it does. I take college classes and have been taking college classes since the summer with kids whose SAT scores are across the board and I honestly do not see any correlation with their scores and their ability to be successful in the classroom. </p>
<p>I have a friend who struggles with the SAT and can barely achieve average scores, but she is kicking ass in her college classes, which are no joke by the way. I’m not an expert and my opinions are pretty much just based on my own observations, but I do not think the SAT is doing its job. It is definately not an “equalizer” to me.</p>
<p>i’m not biased cuz I did similarly on both the act reading and sat cr.</p>
<p>honestly the act reading section only shows how fast you can scan a passage for specific pieces of information. Seriously, that’s what 95 percent o the questions require, quickly scanning a passage to find some random fact.</p>
<p>In college or high school, I have NEVER had to read really fast to pick out specific pieces of information. seriously.</p>
<p>I would say that the act reading section is pretty useless honestly</p>
<p>as is the science section.</p>
<p>My friends are amazing at science and got 800’s on sat 2’s in chem, bio, physics.</p>
<p>but they don’t get about 29 on the sciecne section.</p>
<p>seriously, it’s about reading graphs really fast who cares you are never going to have to read graphs really fast in college.</p>
<p>how well you do on the science and reading sections I’m sure don’t really correlate to anything honestly.</p>
<p>and I did well in standardized testing, so I’m not biased/</p>
<p>^I agree that the science section is pretty useless, but I do think the reading section has some merit. Some of the questions are recall questions and require you to go back in the passage and find answers, but the majority of the questions are comprehension questions. I’m definately not saying the ACT reading is even THAT much better than the SAT CR section, but I do think it measures reading skills better. And I’m not biased either, I did well on both (34 and a 720). </p>
<p>I don’t know if someone already addressed this, but if you can prep for something and increase your score significantly, doesn’t that completely invalidate even the slightest notion that it could be an IQ test? Seriously. I increased my SAT score by almost 600 points in a short amount of prep time.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061360427-post71.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061360427-post71.html</a></p>
<p>@ DwightEisenhower:</p>
<p>1) No one is stating SAT is all intelligence. If one kid never got an education in geometry, that’s part of the 30% of your score affected by non-innate factors. Your hypothetical is not a counterexample. I also agree the writing section is bull, but god forbid we require kids to communicate with standard English!</p>
<p>2) Sorry, America has a little thing called social mobility. Here’s some evidence rather than the vague pontificating you engage in (full article: [IQ</a> Will Put You In Your Place](<a href=“http://www.eugenics.net/papers/murray.html]IQ”>http://www.eugenics.net/papers/murray.html))</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So basically, since culture and educational opportunity is controlled for by looking at sibling pairs, we see that intelligence, ON AVERAGE, accounts for either one’s econ ascent or one’s econ decline.</p>
<p>3) Of course it’s not accepted by a majority of the scientific community. If a university prof (especially at elite colleges) states discussing politically incorrect ideas about race or intelligence or whatever, they’d be ostracized and possibly lose their job. This happened to Larry Summer, president of Harvard, due to his comments about women in science.</p>
<p>4) Again the SAT is not ENTIRELY an intelligence exam. It correlates very well with them though. I’ve seen estimates of about 70%.</p>
<p>Upon further review, this post came off somewhat snarky. I apologize for that. You make some good points that unfortunately the actual evidence contradicts.</p>
<p>There is no problem with the SAT. Empirical evidence, as opposed to the psuedo “studies” out of UCB, demonstrates that the SAT is exactly what it purports to be – an accurate predictor of future college performance.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/opinion/18salins.html?_r=1&th&emc=th[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/opinion/18salins.html?_r=1&th&emc=th</a></p>
<p>College adcoms’ disapproval of the SAT has nothing to do with the validity of the test. Instead, they view the SAT as a roadblock in achieving “diversity” which they mistakenly believe is their raison dêtre. From their point of view the SAT has to go because it is too good at what it does.</p>
<p>I am also shocked by the attempts by adcoms to criticise the SAT because it is not a “pure” or precise test of IQ, since the adcoms are the reason for this.</p>
<p>Earlier versions of the SAT had a near perfect positive correlation to IQ and in fact were used by MENSA as an acceptable substitute for an IQ test. Adcoms objected to the SAT on the puported basis that IQ should not be part of the basis for admissions (sane people might ask at this point, “why not?”).</p>
<p>In response to these “concerns,” sections were added and subtracted which weakened the degree of positive correlation between the SAT and IQ. [It still exists; it is just somewhat less now than it once was.] Now the hypocrites are criticising the test because it is an imperfect test of IQ. As I indicated previously, none of these criticisms of the SAT make any sense unless you view them in the context of the adcoms’ perception of their mission, which is to elevate diversity over any competing qualification.</p>