Although no company would admit it for legal reasons, SAT scores are being used as a proxy for IQ testing. That’s the real reason hedge funds and the like use the scores. If not for Griggs, they would be administering actual IQ tests.
I agree with this. The question I have is if it would be legal for a company to ask all applicants to take the WAIS-IV and not interview anyone with an IQ below 130. Maybe the lawyers can chime in on whether the law has changed since Griggs.
I suspect that too. Some businesses (including many hedge funds) require certain levels of general intelligence in addition to specialized skills. They need employees who can “connect the dots”, making connections between seemingly unrelated events beyond mechanical data analysis and simple logic. The pre-2005 versions of SAT had sections on analogies and comparisons that were good for this purpose. However, both analogies and comparisons have been removed from SAT since 2005, which made SAT tests simpler, and yes, easier, but with less predictive power for that purpose.
I think the top colleges have gotten a lot of harder- at least the two colleges that my spouse, son and I attended. First, the students attending them are more capable than my spouse and I were back in the day- higher test scores and more impressive accomplishments. Second, as my son once remarked this summer, life at his college involves many days with two activities: eating and studying. Every possible moment has to be spent studying. The students work incredibly hard studying for hours on end, the level of thinking and analysis is as challenging as ever, and the workload is ridiculous. I think sometimes colleges confuse rigor with quantity. The amount of reading required between classes is staggering, and on top of that, add in essays and projects and presentations. Then, participate in extracurricular activities or sports. Forget about getting time to relax or getting eight hours of sleep on a weeknight!
EDIT: I don’t want to make it sound too bleak, though! The kids socialize over meals, get study rooms together at the library or study side by side in the common room… and they do relax together on Saturdays.
@roethlisburger – Griggs is still good law. I found it cited in a 2019 Federal Appellate case (DC circ ) called Davis v. District of Columbia (which related to whether there was a cognizable claim of disparate impact in a reduction-of-force setting.
But Griggs doesn’t represent a per se rule – it has to be shown that the practice is not directly tied to the job requirements and that it actually has a disparate and discriminatory impact.
Based on what I have observed with my daughter, I would have to say no to this question. College has not gotten too easy.
I would like to add that there are many variables involved.
I can tell you that all of the “math” mistakes my son made on the SAT were actually reading mistakes. Overlooking a “not” or an “except” or leaving out a step in what was essentially a problem a fourth grader could do. He got a 5 on Calc BC, an 800 on the math level 2 subject test. So I don’t think the fact that he had a couple of incorrect answers every single time he took the SAT indicated anything but carelessness on a test that was too easy. I think it’s ridiculous for firms to ask for your SAT scores.
I am very wary of viewing SAT test as an indication of some innate ability. I had 790 in SAT math but was not at all good in math or engineering, while I did really well in English Lit without studying that much with my SAT English score of 670 obtained in a SAT test I took 6 years after I immigrated to USA. 790 plus 670 equals 1460 which was 99.9 percentile (1 out of 1000) in 1980s. I remember when I applied for colleges my SAT score was higher than average SAT score at Harvard. So, I applied to Harvard despite my 2.9 GPA in high school.
As fascinating as this discussion is, you guys are missing two key facts:
1- companies which ask for SAT scores are able to level the playing field- so that the helmet sport athlete who was accepted to Stanford with SAT scores in the lowest quartile, doesn’t necessarily have a leg up over the kid at Providence or Seton Hall with high SAT scores (assuming reasonably similar transcripts and everything else). It is the anti-elitist hiring tool- the Stanford name doesn’t get you an interview, and the less elite college doesn’t keep you out. I have hired stellar young grads from colleges nobody on CC has ever heard of.
2- Recruiters from DE Shaw or Bridgewater or BCG don’t show up at your kids dorm rooms and drag them out of bed to ask their SAT scores and insist that they interview. If you (or your kids) find the practice bizarre or offensive or irrelevant- guess what? Just interview at one of the tens of thousands of companies which do NOT ask for SAT scores.
You guys get agitated over the most ridiculous things. Just don’t interview with any company which asks questions you find offensive. And/or make sure to call your office of Career Development if you are offended by a question so they can make sure the companies aren’t violating federal, state or local law, AND are abiding by the terms of service with the college which every company has to agree to in order to participate in campus recruiting.
It is illegal to ask a 22 year old college student if she is pregnant during an interview. It is not illegal to ask if she’s fluent in German (for a role in the company’s Munich office) and it’s not illegal to ask her SAT scores. You don’t like it? Change the law.
Is there any case law on this issue? Often companies get away with illegal behavior because no one challenges their illegal behavior in court. If an appropriate plaintiff took legal action, and a disparate impact was found, it seems difficult to believe the practice of asking college graduate applicants, some with MBAs or other graduate degrees, for their high school SAT scores would be found consistent with Griggs.
One can choose not to report. Or to report only more recent scores from other tests if you prefer. And most of the top finance firms have very specific diversity hiring programs which assure good inclusion statistics. Actually, one of my kids found it a very useful filter-her scores were good but not outstanding, and if they company asked for them she knew it wouldn’t be a good fit, as they wanted more innately quantitative folks. She was happy to have the filter-so much better, for her, than wondering if she didn’t attend the right prep school or have the right connections or the artificial intelligence algorithm so commonly used nowdays knocked her out. She appreciated the candor. And she would be the first to say it was more determinative in fit than a mere college degree, which proved almost nothing, she would tell you, as some employers have found to their dismay.
Applicants generally are given a choice of what type of test scores to report. If they’ve taken GRE or GMAT, they’re probably expected to report those scores instead.
The firms that ask for your SAT scores also ask for your subscores. Just like most college admission offices, these firms really only care about the subscores. A quantitative hedge fund, for example, knows the math subscore is almost irrelevant because the math portion of the test is just too easy, as you said. It’s more interested in your verbal comprehension and reasoning ability.
“1- companies which ask for SAT scores are able to level the playing field- so that the helmet sport athlete who was accepted to Stanford with SAT scores in the lowest quartile, doesn’t necessarily have a leg up over the kid at Providence or Seton Hall with high SAT scores”
I am not sure that this is true based on what I observed during my daughter’s Investment Banking job search. She was an athlete with 25% percentile ACT score (high verbal and lower math and science). I believe a lot of on campus recruiting at target schools is done by alumni and I am not sure how much input HR has into this process. They interviewed for the senior summer internships and the large percentage of interns get full time offers in August during the last week of internship. After my daughter accepted the full time offer in August she was already involved in recruiting the next class of interns on behalf of her bank. It seems all her peer female athletes who wanted an IB position got one. Obviously, being at a target school (and being a female) give these students a leg up and athletes are viewed positively (they have already proved that they could handle a lot of crap). It is the students from Seton Hall and Providence who have to go through the HR filter.
Obviously recruiting for a quantitative position at a hedge fund may differ from the recruiting for a generic IB position as they look for different strengths in their applicants.
Here’s an article from the WSJ (from 2014) about employers & SAT scores:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/job-hunting-dig-up-those-old-sat-scores-1393374186