<p>I think you would be hard pressed to find someone with a 30+ ACT or 2000+ SAT that is the complete dunce.</p>
<p>What’s the difference between a 2100 and a 2150 or a 31 or a 32? Very little.</p>
<p>I think it’s better to take it a few times to find out your range, and even then, it’s an imperfect system. But it’s the best thing we got.</p>
<p>Pretty decent correlation between SAT and intelligence in my opinion, though it has nothing to speak about study habits, approach, etc. Though I had massive increases in score, I actually did get ‘smarter’ lol, in the sense that I have a stronger vocabulary, a more refined grammar intuition, and a better feel for reading analytically. </p>
<p>The ACT is a joke; I’m pretty sure it correlates with nothing. Besides how fast you can do simple math problems taught in school.</p>
<p>^The ACT and SAT aren’t THAT different. Lol</p>
<p>I, along with most others, got the same percentile score on both of them.</p>
<p>Nah I still think it’s BS lol. I hate the ACT.</p>
<p>People who say things such as: the SAT only tests or test-taking ability or it doesn’t relate to intelligence, are the people who did poorly and thus feel like devaluing it. Interestingly enough, this idea relates to the endowment effect. Those of you who feel like you don’t own a high enough score diminish it’s importance. </p>
<p>Dan Ariely did a study on this where he compared the price that students would be willing to pay to buy a ticket to a sporting event if they didn’t have one versus the cost at which they would sell their ticket. This was done with students who had been camping outside for days for a lottery, which would give tickets to a limited number of people. The people who won the tickets valued them a lot more and would only sell them for about a couple grand, whereas those who hadn’t won tickets would not typically offer more than $200.</p>
<p>If this applies to you with the SAT or another standardized test, just admit to yourself that you are incapable of studying for things that you know are important or you are merely not as smart as you think you are.</p>
<p>Daughter did well on the cr and writing sections, so those sections are obviously good measures of intelligence. Not so much with the math section.</p>
<p>“Daughter did well on the cr and writing sections, so those sections are obviously good measures of intelligence. Not so much with the math section.”</p>
<p>Thank you for the excellent example to support my last post. See how this person associates the tests their daughter did well on with the ones that they think are good measures of intelligence. If her daughter had done well in different sections they would have believed that those were the ones that are the best indicators of intelligence.</p>
<p>My earlier comment was a reflection of how silly I think this thread is.</p>
<p>The SAT tests innate intelligence in that a certain basic level of fluid intelligence is needed to get a good score. After that, preparation and focus (and, to some extent, handwriting speed) are the only things that distinguish between test-takers. The difference between a 2400 and 2200 is not, in general, intelligence.</p>
<p>@michael2: Well I appreciate that you attempted to back your opinion up with a study, you can’t use statistics such as those to generate absolutes. A single instance of a high scorer devaluing a high score would falsify your contention. Consider it falsified: there are far better measures of intelligence.</p>
<p>michael2 has shown himself to be a conceited smart aleck/■■■■■. Just ignore him.</p>
<p>@michael2, I’m not sure about your post. If a person think the SAT are not a good indicator of intelligent it doesn’t necessarily mean that that they did not reach their expected score. It all seem a matter of opinion to me. Some intelligent people are just not good test takers or study person.</p>
<p>So for those of you who do not understand basic statistics, know that there are outliers and that applied math and science provides models rather than certainties. One counterexample does not invalidate a statistic. Also, if someone is very intelligent and they excel in math, reading, writing in school, but they do not even know what the SAT is, they will do well regardless of their ability to optimize in test-taking. On the other hand an idiot who is learned in the art of test taking will fail. In addition, how can I be a ■■■■■ when my arguments are based in truth, logic, and reality?</p>
<p>^^ But most of high schoolers should know what the SAT is by the time they take it (provided they’re not Sophomores). Someone may be very intelligent but still suck at math and English. So they would fail the SAT because they are not fluent in Math, CR and Writing. Which would prove that the SAT is not a good indicator of intelligence.</p>
<p>Michael, you need to be a more careful wordsmith. Let me illustrate the problem in your reasoning, or at least in your wording.</p>
<p>Statistic: In general, tickets are valued more by people who were selected to receive them in a lottery than by people who were not. </p>
<p>Supported Conclusion: People tend to undervalue things that they wanted, but did not get. </p>
<p>Unsupported Conclusion: “People who say things such as: the SAT only tests or test-taking ability or it doesn’t relate to intelligence, are the people who did poorly and thus feel like devaluing it.”</p>
<p>The gravest error in the unsupported conclusion is that it extracts an absolute from a generalization. This could be fixed by including “in general,” for example. A minor error made in the unsupported conclusion is that it does not account for differences between tests and lotteries. As you test so well, I am sure you do not need to be made explicitly aware of the distinctions between the two.</p>
I think we need to clear some things up. While it is true that SAT and IQ scores correlate with a very high r-value of .82, this data comes from a 2004 study that used data from 1979 when the SAT actually resembled a group administered intelligence test. Since that time however, it has undergone some major changes and is more like an achievement test now. This is why MENSA and other societies of the sorts only accepts scores prior to the changes made to the test in the mid-90s. So while it is true that they probably still correlate, they probably don’t at such a high magnitude. Research suggests that IQ and achievement correlate anywhere from .5 to .7. There are no recent studies other than the Frey and Detterman study from 2004 that investigate IQ and SAT.
So there’s a little background. I understand that anecdotal evidence is not something to base arguments off of when dealing with statistical data but I know someone with a professionally tested IQ of 135 and a merely average SAT score (both following 2005 which was when the most recent changes were implemented in the SAT). I scored a little above average with a 1660 sophomore year (1120 for the 1600 scale) and taught myself calculus in the 9th grade and got a 4 on an AP Calc exam without studying. I was always bored and underchallenged in school and would score in the 95th percentile or higher on some subtests of a nationally administered achievement test ironically by the same acronym as the college admissions SAT. This was a different test for K-12 though. My school never really enriched my desire to advance. I wanted to skip a grade or 2 for the longest time and I was reading high school level science books in 5th grade and middle school, but my parents didn’t want me skipping grades and I didn’t want to leave my friends. A lot of teachers were impressed with my writing abilities. All this fluff aside I’ve taken a few unofficial IQ tests written by psychologists and have scored anywhere from 125-135, yet while this seems to reflect my behaviors as a child and the ease with which I went through school, my SAT score does not. Especially the fact that I scored a 580 on the math section and was always the one skipping ahead 9 chapters because I wanted a challenge and eventually taught myself calculus in 2 months when kids had barely completed algebra 1.
Also regarding the “endowment effect.” I’m fairly confident regarding my abilities. While the results of this test make me question myself why should I degrade my self-worth because I couldn’t finish the math section in the allotted time and made stupid mistakes on easy questions because I get anxiety from feeling timed and rushed?
CONCLUSION:
The old SAT is highly correlated with IQ. The test after 2005 is not nearly the same thing it was prior to that time and certainly nothing like the test prior to 1994. So depending on when you took the test would determine whether or not the results closely reflect IQ or not. The current SAT is not an adequate measure of intelligence in my opinion given the data at our disposal.
No
Since I did well on my standardized tests, yes.
If I hadn’t done as well, I’d say no.
(I’m kidding, guys. Standardized tests suck).
Yes
ACT and SAT? Sure. State tests for grades 3-11 to determine placement? No. I got 79th percentile on the IOWA Standardized Test Reading section in middle school so I was never allowed to take ‘accelerated’ english, yet I have a solid A in Honors English (9 lol). Not sure what these BS tests prove. Waste of time and GREAT source of stress and frustration for teachers and students.
On the flip side, thank god for OGT (Ohio Graduation Test) that the tenth graders take. 3 hour delays every day next week B)