I don’t remember my SAT score either, but I did attend a school with one of the highest average scores. So I assume I did ok. Nor do I remember my GRE scores. Come to think of it, I don’t remember any of my previous phone numbers either. I don’t really need to remember these things.
I’m also not sure comparison with today’s scores would be very meaningful. Concordance doesn’t mean equivalence. Scores becomes increasingly compressed at the top of range with each redesign, a wide range of scores from the old days would be indifferentiable today.
At the time I was applying to colleges (late 70’s early 80’s era), I remember 1300 kind of being the cutoff for most top schools with 1400 being the target if you were shooting for the most selective schools. That more or less aligns with the concordance table above (just a tad lower). The big change is the admissions rate based upon the concorded scores. Back then, if you scored 1400+ and were in the top 5% of your class, you had a realistic chance of getting into HYP and a very good chance at schools like Duke and Univ of Mich. Your EC’s could simply be playing on a sports team, member of the band/choir, writing for the school paper and working at McD’s over the summer.
I have absolutely no idea what my SAT scores were. I remember keeping them in my memory box for years, but I threw them away years ago. If I were to be asked by a prospective employer what my SAT scores were, I would walk away. I took them almost half a century ago, and I have accomplished much in that time period. My accomplishments are far more important in understanding my value as an employee than some test taken when I was a kid could ever be.
Where I grew up, we had a psychometric test instead. I don’t know what my score was, since they did not share it with you, but only sent to to the universities to which you apply. That may have changed, though. In any case, it was high enough to get me invited to interview for acceptance to medical school (it was a seven year straight shot, not attending medical school after undergrad, and an undergrad was three years).
I bombed the interview, of course, since I was only marginally interested in a medical career to begin with, but my mother bugged me about it. And no, had I declined the interview, they wouldn’t have brought anybody else instead - you were invited to an interview if you applied to biological sciences, and your matriculation average and psychometric scores were above pre-set cutoffs, no matter how many people passed that cutoff.
To be honest, I went in seriously, but the first thing that they did was look at my activities in the past (including being an amature herptologist), and demand aggressively “how do these contribute to humanity?!” Any interest I had in learning medicine dissipated at that moment. I responded that some of them were for my personal enjoyment, and things went downhill from there. They asked at one point “so you think that you’re better than everybody else?”. I did have some self control, so I didn’t respond “isn’t that a prerequisite for medical school in this country?”
To be fair, it was just after getting out of the army and I was at the peak IDGAF period of my life.
The SAT was not re-normed in 2005, as it was in 1996 and 2016. An assumption is that a Verbal score from 1996-2005 is equated to the average of the two non-Math sections of the new test.
Prior to 1995, the test was last re-normed in 1942. So if you took the test prior to 1942, you should not use this table.
For me, the odds would be improved. I didn’t even apply to Ivys, because COA was prohibitive. But now top schools want first gen, Pell grant kids with high stats. Nowadays COA for a kid like me would be free.
I am not sure what the 2016 re-norming did. I have a kid who took it in 2014 and 2018 and his score only changed 10 points. Both times unprepped.
I see that his propensity to make (unforced) errors has not changed in those 4 years. But I don’t think there was a re-norming.
Management consulting used to ask. Not sure if they still do.
I wouldn’t be surprised in some parts of finance ask for this at the entry point. Because a lot of finance doesn’t hire for skill at the entry point. It hires for perceived IQ. They are also hiring for work ethic and ability to not make mistakes under pressure. Mistakes often cost money in real time.
SpaceX has SAT/ACT, along with GPA, as required fields in their online applications for experienced hires. They also have fields for GMAT and GRE but those are optional. Example here: Job Application for Mission Manager at SpaceX
My 1990 score of 1390 combined would be a modern score of 1490-1500 combined. And I agree with an above poster that there’s no way I’d have gotten into the college I attended nowadays.
