Was it in the 1980s? The 1980s SAT had a verbal section that was mostly a vocabulary test and a math section of 9th, 10th, and some 11th grade math (algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2 – not trigonometry, precalculus, or calculus that some people in super-high-achieving high schools seem to think is normal math for those grades). Obviously, there was a correlation to tests that purportedly measure IQ, but the SAT was still significantly affected by previous academic experiences. Of course, then and now, there were and are test taking skills that are specific to standardized tests, or the SAT in particular, that may not necessarily be taught in school, and not applicable outside of standardized tests.
The college board recentered SAT scores to “normalize” them to 500 for the two subsections as “average” rather than the then average in the mid-high 400s. As a result, most people saw an increase in their “recentered” scores for tests taken before 1995.
However, there was one interesting exception to this…folks whose math score was above the low-mid 700s actually saw a slight decrease in their “recentered” score for some weird reason.
My HS college guidance office had a chart diagramming how the “recentering” increased or sometimes decreased one’s scores on each section depending on how high one scored before recentering and I knew several high math scoring classmates who were grumbling or in a few cases, infuriated at finding out the recentering ended up causing a slight decrease in their recentered math score.
In real life, what standardized tests measure is your willingness to jump through hoops. Not a bad thing, the world needs conformity. But with all the in-our-faces prep kids go through, sharing questions, etc, and the retakes, I find it hard to consider these “pure” measure of intelligence. There’s a negative connotation to “standardized,” too.
Would like to see a link claiming it’s an IQ test, so I can send back some contrary links.
This was my kid. She graduated in the top 5% of a very highly competitive public HS. Every final grade every year was an A or A-. She took eight APs and got mostly 5s, some 4s. Her highest SAT after four tries was 1350 CR-M; 2040 CRMW. She tried the ACT once and got a 29. She was expecting above 2100 and maybe closer to 2200. She couldn’t crack 700 on any one section. I still can’t understand how someone who achieved a 5 on the AP calc AB exam couldn’t crack 700 on the math SAT (close – 690, but still). I talked about it in this thread last year: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1647058-very-high-gpa-middling-sats-p1.html
I really didn’t know if she was “just” a grinder or if she really was very smart. Fast forward to this semester, her first in college. She is on track for a 3.8 to 4.0. In one weeder class that about a quarter of the students have dropped, she has an A thus far. So . . . still don’t know what happened with those SATs. Her score, although very good, was not commensurate with her GPA.
My S graduated from college in 2010, and has been working in his field since then. He is currently interviewing for a new job, and is regularly asked for his SAT scores. In fact, at his most recent interview, the interviewer made a snarky comment about his score. It stinks that the test he took in 2005 can negatively affect him today, despite an Ivy degree and years of outstanding work performance. Employers use it as a proxy for raw quantitative ability and IQ. Most companies don’t require an actual IQ test, but it seems many wish they could and use the SAT as a substitute.
For those submitting SAT/ACT scores for jobs, is it self reported or are applicants submitting an official score report? If I were asked what my SAT scores were from 10 years ago, I’d respond that I don’t remember and would prefer to be judged on my accomplishments and experiences in the last decade. Perhaps, that’s just me in my 50s talking but I think I’d opt out. I find it hard to believe that an applicant who matches up in other ways would be left out of the running for a test score.
Many others would say the same thing about HS GPAs or GPAs in general.
Some of the people I’ve known who expressed such sentiments about GPAs include K-12 educators and some college Profs I’ve had.
And I can see where they are coming from…especially if the instructor(s) are susceptible to students playing at being “teacher’s pets”, happily adding glitter to projects graded on aesthetic artistic factors in non-art related classes, or kissing up for better grades/treatment.
Incidentally, this was one major reason some HS classmates were glad our public magnet didn’t accept middle school teacher recommendations as part of the admissions process. In their recollections, it seems far too many middle school teachers are particularly susceptible to playing favorites based on whether a student is “likable”, is eager to please, influential parents, or fits their biases of what a “good student” is.
Asking a college graduate for his or her SAT score is moronic. On the other hand, while I’ll absolutely concede that SATs aren’t everything, I’m not wild about attempts to claim that they are nothing either.
Getting a high SAT/ACT score may be the result of working hard (or, less positively, of “gaming” the text), but it can also be the result of CERTAIN TYPE of natural intelligence. It isn’t the only type of intelligence, and factors like anxiety or lack of preparation can prevent even those who do possess that type of intelligence from showing it come test day, but kids who do well on the SAT should be proud of their scores.
Dismissing kids who do well on standardized tests as passionless grinds is both unfair and unkind.
My son, who graduated last May, was asked for his SAT scores at interviews for biotech consulting companies and his classmates who were applying to the most prestigious investment banks, such as Goldman, and to hedge funds were also asked for their scores. My son decided to work as a lab researcher instead and applied to grad school. He took his GREs this summer and his scores correlated exactly to his SAT score…I mean exactly the same percentile. So out of curiosity, I googled how closely ppl score on the SAT and grad level exams, such as the GRE and LSATs. Not surprisingly, there’s a close correlation. And unfortunately for those who aren’t good standardized test takers, grad schools put more weight on the scores than undergrad admissions. But for the vast majority of students, their high school scores will never come back to haunt them…just those applying to competitive banking/consulting jobs and ppl opting to take grad school standardized exams.
Depends on the grad school and department.
Incidentally, the academic PhD programs I know of don’t place heavy weight upon them beyond eliminating those with extremely low scores for their programs. My impression is that the departments/fields I know of place far less emphasis on GREs once a candidate met a certain internal departmental minimum threshold than undergrad admissions did with SAT/ACTs.
As for the close correlation between SAT/ACTs and graduate school standardized scores…maybe. However, that doesn’t seem to hold with most people I know. Seems their percentiles either increased greatly…especially those among friends who felt the GRE math was far easier than the SAT version they took back in HS or decreased.
And I know few people whose LSAT scores/percentiles corresponded with ones on their SAT/ACT. Most saw their percentiles on the LSAT drop in relation to the one on their SATs. Not too surprising as the SAT/ACT doesn’t have a logical reasoning/puzzles equivalent.
…since the percentiles are not comparable.
There, I fixed it for you, cobra. 
(Hint: the test takers for the LSAT are self-selected, which is no different than those who self-select to take the Subject Tests.)
In fact, the correlation between SAT/ACT and LSAT has to be extremely strong. Those colleges with the highest mean SAT/ACT scores also have the highest mean LSAT scores. And that makes perfect sense since the colleges with the highest SAT/ACT scores purposely select only those with high test-takng ability (absent a hook).
It’s interesting that there are so many discussions of poor test taker/higher GPA students and not the opposite. Our son is a fabulous test taker, but doesn’t have the sustained focus and drive to study hard and do well in many classes. While I keep hoping that the latter will change with maturity, in real life hard work and dedication trump high test scores.
IQ is also just another test. Saying the SAT is just a proxy for IQ is kind of odd.
A very different sample group takes the SAT and GRE. The vast majority of HS students take the SAT or ACT. In some states the participation rate exceeds 90%. In contrast only a minority of college students take the GRE, and that minority tends to be above average college students who graduate with respectable grades. Scoring a particular percentile in a group of above average college grads indicates a much better performance than scoring that same percentile in a group of not much above average HS students. So your son did much better on the GRE than SAT.
That said, even with this sample group difference, some students score far higher percentiles on the GRE than SAT. I’ve always scored well on math/quantitative/… type exams and did so for both the SAT and GRE, but I’ve never scored as well on verbal type/essay type exams. I scored only ~50th percentile on my verbal SAT. However, when I took the GRE, my score increased tremendously to ~95th percentile. I think one of the key reasons for the increase was different prep. I did not study for the SAT, nor did I have a good idea what type of questions would occur on the exam. My key weakness was vocabulary, which really brought down my verbal score. In contrast I took practice GRE exams, and when I saw vocabulary was a weakness, I studied common GRE vocabulary words prior to taking the test. College experience with far more extensive readings and more experience taking longer exams than I did in HS also had an influence.
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@mathyone Measuring IQ is an inexact science, and one that is often done very poorly. It’s not just a matter of taking a single test and declaring, “That’s your IQ.” But that doesn’t mean a properly interpreted IQ score is not a valid, though sometimes imprecise, measurement of intelligence. I describe measuring intelligence as being like the line from The Sound of Music: “How do you catch a moonbeam in your hand?”
Intelligence exists and the type of intelligence measured by traditional IQ tests and the SAT, etc., is the type of intelligence that generally produces success in life. An IQ test is not “just another test,” but IQ scores are far more important in determining odds of success rather than whether a person can or can not succeed.
Holy moly. IQ and success? Succeed at what? Measured how? I don’t even really need an answer because I have a good idea where it will go.
A high score on a test predicts that you are likely to succeed at getting high scores on other similar tests.
"It’s not just a matter of taking a single test and declaring, “That’s your IQ.” Actually it pretty much is. Your IQ is a score on the test or group of tests which psychologists have made up to try to measure something about intelligence–which is difficult to measure and has many different aspects, some of which lend themselves well to measurement with standardized testing and many of which don’t. Psychologists make up all kinds of tests to try to measure things, with varying levels of success. I don’t know that much about these tests, but I think some of them involve some spatial tasks, which is an ability not tested on the SAT. But if you wanted to be an architect or engineer, it might be helpful.
I would say that the IQ provides some measure of intelligence, just as the SAT provides some measure of academic ability. Both are somewhat incomplete, but there is some overlap in the skills they are testing so they correlate.
It is disingenuous to claim that SAT or IQ tests aren’t predictive of anything.
Ask a professor teaching a class on Russian literature or the Cold War or economic theory if there is a difference between a class where the average SAT verbal score is 550 vs. 730. Ask a professor teaching a statistics or political science class if there’s a difference between kids with a math SAT of 500 vs. 750.
Is “SAT intelligence” the be- all and end-all of human existence? Of course not. Can you tell the difference between average scorers and above average scorers when you are asking them to absorb unfamiliar information, read for comprehension and write analytically, understand information presented in a graph or table?
of course you can. Don’t pretend otherwise.
Do you want your mom’s chemo meds administered by a nurse who doesn’t know how to take weight in lbs. and calculate it in kilos to get the right dosage? I doubt it.
It’s lovely to pretend that SAT scores ONLY measure income. The fact that income is ONE of the things that get captured- in a large sample of test-takers, not necessarily each and every taker, doesn’t diminish the differences at the mean or the tails among groups of takers.