Fellow parents,
I’ve got a little bit of a problem. The young turk in our household is feeling pretty good about himself these days, what with some recent college acceptances and a young lady agreeing to go to senior prom with him. However, he won’t stop crowing about his SAT scores, and rubbing his old man’s face in it. Kid thinks a 1500+ today is not all that different than a 1500+ back then, but he doesn’t know all the history of how the testing scales changed over time.
For the love of all that is good and holy, can someone tell me what the SAT percentile ranks were back in 1988 or so? I could swear that the smartest person in my large suburban high school scored a 1450 or 1460 back then, and it was around a 99th percentile score (I think).
If any of you on CC have hoarded stuff since way back then, help out a fellow parent with those ancient percentiles. I cannot find them anywhere, that’s how old I am.
You will probably have to do two conversions to convert a 1980s SAT score to a supposed equivalent of current SAT scores. There was also a significant 2005 redesign, but nothing seems to suggest that the scoring shifted overall like in the 1995 recentering or 2016 redesign (though some test takers could have done better or worse on the post-redesign versus pre-redesign of that year).
I don’t know where to find SAT percentile details for the 1980s.
But if you search for “SAT Equivalence Tables” you’ll find that the CollegeBoard has published charts on how to convert between pre-April-1995 scores and post-April-1995 scores, April 1995 being when they did the big re-centering of the scores.
So according to CollegeBoard’s own chart, a pre-1995 V+M of 1490 or better equates to a post-1995 V+M of 1600.
Conversely, a post-1995 V+M 1500 equates to a pre-1995 V+M 1425. That seems in line with your recollection of a top student scoring a 1460 in 1988 (equivalent to 1550 post-1995).
Note that the 1995 re-centering changed the verbal scoring a lot more than the math scoring, so lop-sided scorers need to convert V and M individually.
Yes, they have been renormed (lower) twice or more since mine in the late 70s. I had scores of about 740 each, was 99th, and also had been national merit. So yes, a 1500 back then was better than a 1500 now. But hubby is behaving childishly. Tell him to cut it out! Remind him that junior might be the one choosing hubby’s nursing home, so he’d better play nice.
^ Oldest son does not share my sense of fun and adventure. He’s already lamented that when it’s time to put me in a nursing home, he’s going to have to find a home for “troublemakers”. Otherwise, he’s worried he’ll get constant calls from the Director about my behavior. When I told my friends about this, they all enthusiastically lobbied that we all be put in the Troublemaker’s Home together.
However, that assumes that each intervening test format is equally easy/hard for you, and that your score on each of the CR and W sections of the 2005-2015 version was equal to your V score on the pre-2005 version.
Fellow parents, picture me slinking away quietly, never to raise this topic again. I realize my “adjusted percentile” still doesn’t look quite as good as I’d hoped it would relative to the whippersnapper.
I’ll have to focus on other areas besides standardized tests to make my points, but thanks all the helpful links.
Looking thru some of those ETS publications reminded me of sweating it out in stats class trying to remember when to utilize the poisson, the student-t, and other distributions. I think Conrad’s Heart of Darkness sums it up best: “The horror, the horror.”
@parent365 – how many times did you take the SAT? Did you take a test prep course?
Because back when I took the test in 1969, everyone went in cold and it was one-and-done.
And when my son took the test in 2000, he went in cold and it was one-and-done.
And quite frankly, and don’t think the test has any validity whatsoever in the current climate of extensive test prep and repeat administrations. All it is a test of persistence and willingness to study.
I have noticed something in my lifetime – something of an inverse relationship between the level at which a person brags about stuff like test scores and actual real-world intelligence. Probably tied in somewhat to the high end of Dunning-Kruger effect. Smarter people tend to be more aware of what they don’t know or understand-- and of course the smartest people would also be aware of all of the flaws in standardized testing, so less likely to place a lot of importance on the score. More likely to be challenging themselves with stuff that’s difficult for them to figure out.
Of course your son is only around age 17 so doesn’t even yet have a fully developed prefrontal cortex, leaving room for him to do all sorts of idiotic things over the next half dozen years or so.
Does your son have a full ride scholarship to a college he will be attending next year? Because if not, the relative numerical value of your respective bank account balances might be a lot more important right now.
I’ve been taking the free released SATs over the past month with my son, in order to share the pain and try to motivate him. I’ve clawed my math score up to 680 but I did manage one perfect EBRW. I guess my math brain cells have been dying faster than my verbal brain cells.