Poll: Do you think that the SAT measures intelligence

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But wait, people who are extremely intelligent almost always have a learning disorder--- But I'm sure you'll disagree with that, also... Not even going there, buddy.

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<p>It isn't that extremely intelligent people have learning disorders but that they don't relate to things the same as the rest of us. Nick the Greek was a famous gambler. Because he was famous, he got to meet Einstein. In Nick's book, he told of how frustrated he was because he couldn't get Einstein to understand the rules of roulette. After trying for about the fifth time, he asked Einstein what he didn't understand about it, and Einstein said that he didn't understand how anyone could bet on it. And Einstein was a great humanist and loveable guy. Imagine somebody working on a higher plane that you can't communicate well with. You might think that they were stupid.</p>

<p>Just a general comment on this thread: Intelligence is probably overrated as a human characteristic. Except for college admissions, there are a lot of more important things such as: Who you know, amount of money you have, niceness, work ethic, ability to work with people, ...</p>

<p>No, they don't measure intelligence.</p>

<p>"SATs measure your ability to take the SATs. If you think otherwise I'm sorry to say that you're either grossly misinformed or an idiot. SATs do NOT measure intelligence in any way, they were not designed to and thus one cannot deduce intelligence from an SAT score. I know a complete idiot who got a near-perfect score on the SATs. Why? Because he has a good memory, I guess. But trust me when I say he's a dumbass. Conversely, I know a genius (seriously, the guy is one of the smartest people I have ever met in my entire life, and I've met some pretty damn intelligent people) and he got a very low SAT score (he has an IQ of around 160. His aptitude, potential and ability levels were found to be very high or off the charts in nearly every respect in the Morrisby test).
Just goes to show you that the SATs mean nothing outside of being an obligatory formality in US education."</p>

<p>Beautifully said.</p>

<p>i concur with great concurrence</p>

<p>yeah i think it does</p>

<p>well...i think the SAT measures how good of an education you've gotten (how much you were taught as well as how much you could absorb and apply)</p>

<p>dufus, that's a very good take on the matter, actually: that extremely smart people or geniuses operate on such a different plane of thought than the average person that they may seem dumber than they really are..</p>

<p>I want to add that geniuses are often geniuses in one field and one field only (maths, physics, philosophy, writing/poetry/literature..), and this genius is usually countered by an inability or ineptitude in a given subject or field (not just academical fields, mind). Einstein for example was apparently really bad in humanities while, of course, excelling in the sciences.
When you meet a 'genius' you'll most likely observe this trend.
For example: SATs have obligatory maths sections, and the whole score is an average of all these sections, THUS a literary genius could get a mediocre SAT score because he is not good at maths at all, even though he excelled in the language/vocab part of the test.</p>

<p>i havent read any posts, so forgive me if im saying somthing that someone already said</p>

<p>but my take on the SAT is that students who score high won't necesarily do well in freshmen year of college. For that, grades/AP courses and tests are the best predictor because it shows your work ethic and ability to deal with difficult subject matter. </p>

<p>However, I do not feel the SAT is completely worthless test. I am not some typical near-perfect SAT scorer (i scored a 2050, which is way lower than my gpa) yet I feel the SAT shows your ability to analyze and solve things within a small period of time and is part of your intelligence. The old SAT test was very much an aptitude test i believe; it covered basic math that needed strong thinking skills and tough analogies. The new one unfortunately is more content based</p>

<p>The problem I have with the SAT is that its flawed... essentially the richer you are, the more classes and preparation you can do towards the test. If NO ONE studied or did any form of preparation nor even knew what was being tested, then this test would be excellent and very fair, though thats obvisouly too idealistic and never going to happen.</p>

<p>the only people ive met who have gotten perfect scores are the people who NEVER studied and just walked in to take it....</p>

<p>my conclusion to the poll is that FOR THOSE WHO WALKED INTO THE TEST WITHOUT EVER STUDYING OR PREPARING AT ALL AND SCORED ABOVE A 2300, they are truly intelligent people, HOWEVER, THOSE WITH GPAS THAT ARE HIGHER THAN THESE TOP-SCORERS, WILL ULTIMATELY DO BETTER IN COLLEGE.</p>

<p>yeah what nick333 said...i got 800 CR, 800 W but got 690 and then 700 M. Sucks.</p>

<p>SAT measure intelligence?</p>

<p>Well I have a 2050 and I just took an IQ test at intelligencetest.com and score a 144+.</p>

<p>So apparently I have an IQ in the 99.87th percentile, but my SAT score suks.</p>

<p>woopdidoo</p>

<p>IQ tests on the internet aren't very good predictors...lol</p>

<p>Nope. But take the average of about 5 or 6 and it should be decent. I took a real IQ test about 2 years back, and got a 148.</p>

<p>School, SAT, top 25 students, nhs, ect.. shows nothing but the ability to do what the school board requires. My teacher had always said this:</p>

<p>Some of the top students are no where near top 1 percent of intelligence.</p>

<p>The SAT should be a blank piece of paper. What the students decide to do with it will should be scored like creativy, imagination, uniqueness, ect... That is, how i think, intelligence should be measured.</p>

<p>My teacher likes to use this as a good example. Suppose you have a barometer and you were asked to take the height of the skyscraper. Of course most of you would say take measurment of it at the bottom, then at the top, then use some calculus mumbo-jumbo to find the height. FEW would say tie a string to the barometer and measure the length of the string; or tell the janitor that you would give him a barometer if he would tell you the specs. of the building.</p>

<p>The SAT isn't meant to be a creativity test, that is the job of the IQ test. The SAT is meant to display how intelligent you are on high-school testing material.</p>

<p>You could drop it and time how long it takes to get to the ground. In business classes, they call this "thinking outside of the box".</p>

<p>The problem with Math section is that it doesn't measure math ability so much as ability to do tricks and techniques. Assuming that the people taking it had completed pre-calc, it might measure math ability or even intelligence, but the people getting the highest scores are the ones using short-cuts and tricks that are learned from the SAT preparation books/courses. This is why URM's score lower. They are statistically less well off socio-economically or more likely to have parents who did not attend college, and so therefore less likely to prep for the test.</p>

<p>I'm sorry but I just can't see how anyone who has seen what is in the test or studied the SAT prep material could ever think that the test measures intelligence. Talk about protective rationalization.</p>

<p>In order to know the tricks, you'd have to know how to do the material (to an extent, you'd have to recognize the pattern).</p>

<p>I dont think the SAT necessarily measures intelligence persay, but from the people I know, I have seen a strong correlation between demonstrated intelligence and high SAT scores, and there is just no denying that. Maybe it would be most fair to say it measures academic intelligence, test-taking skills and common sense most of all.</p>

<p>"Maybe it would be most fair to say it measures academic intelligence, test-taking skills and common sense most of all."</p>

<p>Thank you! That is the answer I was trying to make. It is called the Reasoning Test, so I'd assume that you used common sense and tricks, etc.</p>

<p>glucose101: When presented with the question "If you triple the diameter of a sphere, what happens to the volume?", you have several courses of action:
1) You can wonder what a sphere and diameter are. This is what you are referring to as knowing the material.
2) You can do a ratio on the two formulas. This is what a mathematican would do.
3) You can plug in numbers and see what happens. This is what somebody who has studied the prep material would do. (Of course, this isn't a proof for all spheres.)
4) You would just know the answer. This is what a genius would do, or somebody who has done the problem before.</p>

<h1>4 is probably best, but my point is that #3 is a lot faster than #2 and doesn't require hardly any intelligence. Get me a monkey, not a mathematician. The whole math test is like that. It is true that the questions are framed in the language of mathematics and that language is a little hard to deal with until you get used to it. This, once again, is knowledge and not intelligence.</h1>

<p>Mensa stopped accepting high SAT as evidence for membership about 10 years ago. To get into Mensa, you have to score in the top 2 percent of a test measuring IQ. (From what I've heard from some Mensa members who were normal, most Mensa members are odd.)</p>

<p>Doesn't measure but reflects.</p>