<p>I had a conversation yesterday that may help students understand those seemingly "irrational" and terrifying decisions to reject well qualified, super high SAT-scoring applicants. (And maybe help them relax at least a little.) </p>
<p>A friend pointed out a relationship I'd never thought of, the one between grade inflation and the predictive power of the SAT. You can probably guess the rest: once you have an applicant pool clustered largely within one standard deviation at the top of the SAT-score scale and you're measuring correlation between those tightly bunched scores and college grades that are mostly As and A- and B+ s, the correlation between SAT and first-year GPA declines a lot. In other words, at elite institutions, the SAT loses a lot of its (already modest) ability to do what it's supposed to do--predict how well students will perform academically at your institution once they arrive.</p>
<p>So adcoms understandably look elsewhere in the dossier to predict both how an applicant will perform and contribute. Maybe looking at it from the adcom's perspective can help applicants relax at least a little: it's not as if they're rejecting those 2400-SATers because the applicant pool is so full of them that they can just toss them out right and left (at Princeton, in 2005, for example, more than 25% of the class had math scores below-horror!--700, the same for CR). The moral, I think, is that if your standardized test scorces fall within the mid-range of admitted students, the focus as they consider your application is probably going to fall elsewhere.</p>
<p>The SAT is too easy. You need a harder test that will distinguish the smart from the really smart from the truly brilliant. Right now you have some smart kids who take the test five times to achieve their 2400, lumped in with the truly brilliant who finished the test 1/2 hour early.</p>
<p>NJers, the naturally brilliant will stand out from the rest of their application. And colleges will see that some kids took it 5 times to get a 2400, and of course that won't be as highly regarded.</p>
<p>He's somewhat right though...most people can study to achieve at least 2100+...the test should be more difficult...it should really seperate people</p>
<p>You call the SAT "easy"? I'm sorry, but that's a ridicilious statement. Granted, I didn't do poorly on the test. I scored a 2180 (710 M / 680 CR / 790 W), but for a lot of people, the SAT is a tricky test.</p>
<p>If "brilliance" is what you want to measure, just replace the SAT with a real IQ test. You can then get a t-shirt made with your score on it so all your friends will know!</p>
<p>it really depends, but it is possible to increase one's IQ score...I tend to agree with Rick Tyler though, an IQ test DOES more accurately depict one's abilities</p>
<p>The SAT before 1995 was much harder than it is now. The ceiling was so high that about seven people scored above 1580, a rarity of 1 in 400,000. I agree and think that they should make the SAT more challenging. It wouldn't really hurt anyone, it just wouldn't limit people with outstanding intelligence.</p>
<p>We need to have this thread locked, so that you don't given the College Board any ideas. :rolleyes: I can see it now: SAT-IIIs, a test that looks like all the hard questions from a normal SAT-Reasoning test and is designed so that it spreads out all those scores at the top 3-4%, allowing elite colleges to draw meaningful distinctions between all those super-qualified applicants. I'm going to have nightmares about this.</p>
<p>Brilliant people might be leaders in the future. But what's the point to distinguish between the smart and the really smart? So do the "really smart" type usually succeed in life or the ones who work hard and achieve their goals? If a student doesn't have determination and passion, a high IQ doesn't get them to success. Life is not all about how smart we are. It's more about how we are smart.</p>
<p>Bush's IQ has been estimated at around 125.</p>
<p>Bush may have more innate intelligence, but he can't speak worth a darn. Thus, he appears less intelligent. JFK actually was not a good president (read Seymour M. Hersh's Dark Side of Camelot), but he was charismatic and appeared as a highly intelligent individual.</p>
<p>I personally think the SAT is rather arcane. It think a much better test would be a comprehensive exam of what you should have learned in high school. I would put on this test a literature section, a writing section, a BIG math section covering algebra I to pre-calculus (though everyone SHOULD go through calculus before college, come on, it's not that hard really), biology, chemistry and physics sections, American and World History sections, make each student take a language test, and have an optional art test for those students who are artistically incline. Oh, and each section should be part multiple choice, part short answer, and part long essay/problem solving. And the short answer questions and essays should be most important, and should ask very difficult conceptual questions. The test format should change quite often, and it should be very difficult to study/cram/memorize for this test (unlike the current SAT and SAT subject tests). </p>
<p>There are world-class institutions that use similar tests. The Indian Institutes of Technology have rigorous entrance examenations and change their test formats often to discourage memorization. I think America needs the same thing.</p>
<p>Fock that, Illinois kid. That would be TREMENDOUSLY disadvantaging for people who went to ****ty schools...and how would testing specific subjects discourage memorization? It would encourage memorization by making you master specific material. The SAT is way better. Keep it the way it is. All those things you described already exist as SAT 2 subject tests</p>
<p>I disagree. I don't think it should replace the SAT, but it could be an additional test, and the colleges that believe in its philosophy could accept it.</p>
<p>lol...don't worry, there will ALWAYS be an SAT...</p>