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<p>I agree. But I do not think an analogy is appropriate here. My simple but significant point: if 50 points, for example, is our threshold, then 500 is the same as 550, which is the same as 600; 500 is, thus, the same as 600.</p>
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It would be meaningful without the test prep industry and the practice of multiple retakes of the exam. But as it stands right now the difference between a 2300 and a 2400 is very often simply a combination of luck and persistence – and money. (We do have to keep in mind that the strongest and most persistent score correlation is that between family income and scores – and I believe that one function of the SAT is to allow colleges to maintain the fiction of need-blind admissions – as long as they set the SAT bar high enough they’re pretty much guaranteed a large number of full-pay customers)</p>
<p>I simply do not believe that the ad coms at the top universities are so stupid as to give the tests more significance in admissions decisions than is warranted – IF they wanted to use high-end test scores as an admission criteria, the very first thing they would do is tighten up the rules on how the tests were administered to ensure better data. </p>
<p>As a <em>bottom</em> line, the test makes more sense. Presumably, in the absence of cheating, it would be difficult to score above a minimum threshold without whatever degree of ability the colleges consider to be necessary to meet their academic expectations. It is clear from reported statistics that the top schools all admit a large fraction of students scoring in the 600-700 range (roughly 20% of their admitted students) – but hardly any students scoring below that (roughly 2-3%) – so we can extrapolate that they have figured that 600 is the minimum bar they have settled on. It doesn’t matter what the percentages are for combined scores – if they are willing to admit even 1 student who scores 600 on any given test, they have determined that 600 is good enough to be capable. Even if they weight their admissions decisions in favor of higher scorers – it is the minimum qualifying score that demonstrates the value of the test. </p>
<p>In situations where scores are the sole criteria, applicants clearly understand the significance of the <em>minimum.</em> Students concerned about National Merit qualifying scores need to meet or exceed the cutoff (lowest acceptable score in range) – not the top score. In countries that base university admission on scores on national exams, again the important score is the minimum required… not the maximum.</p>
<p>That is true if we assume no difference. However, if we assume no significant difference, that is another thing. What that change in phrasing allows is for net differences over 50, we could say the difference has appreciated and is significant at that point.</p>
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<p>Which is of course why a subjective judgment is necessary and blindly making fine distinctions should be discouraged.</p>
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<p>Your thinking works for one-to-one comparisons, which generally do not (and supposedly never, though I doubt that) occur in admissions. Let’s say we have three applicants whose scores are 550, 600, and 650. 650 is better than 550, but 600 is equally as good as both of them?</p>
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You imply that a poster is no better than a racist and you are worried about somebody calling you needlessly wordy?
My statement was based on the fact that I asked you three times to explain the words you wrote, and you refused. I thought it might be because you just threw them in for no reason. I was incorrect, so I retract my comment. Now I see it is merely foolishness. Your beef is with the psychological community if you believe that the recognized idea that people of different ages have different levels of emotional and psychological development (and may manifest them in differing forms of thought and speech) is analogous to racism. The citation she quoted was merely an opinion of a respected Pulitzer Prize winning science editor.</p>
<p>Your comment is particularly ironic for a poster who earlier in this thread positively mentioned the “Flynn effect”, which is associated with the book “The Bell Curve”, which had it’s own controversy along those lines.</p>
<p>I’ll be honest, ThisCouldBeHeavn, I do not see how you are hurting my argument. Please clarify.</p>
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<p>Classic 3-way tiebreaker rules would eliminate the bottom person. Other tiebreakers do exist though…</p>
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<p>That’s an absurd interpretation of what I have written.</p>
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<p>Please quote my saying that the Flynn effect was grounded in actual differences (i.e., those outside test scores). If I didn’t (which I didn’t), I don’t see the irony. My mentioning the Flynn effect is not analogous to calmom’s citation.</p>
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<p>The key here is subjectivity. It’s the linchpin of one side’s argument; it’s a concept you have consistently ignored. It’s the reason some people are questioning your mode of thought.</p>
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OK. Either that’s something you conjured up inappropriately in your own head, or something you believe the poster intended, in which case that’s an outrageous insult.</p>
<p>I’m assuming you’re admitting it was the former.</p>
<p>And just declaring something absurd doesn’t make it so.</p>
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<p>If by “subjectivity” you mean admissions officers’ discretion to assess applications holistically, then I certainly agree. My arguments have had nothing to do with the SAT’s broader role in admissions, just how it should be considered if it were in a vacuum and, more relevantly, how this would have subtle though non-negligible effects when it is considered as one part of the applicant’s offerings.</p>
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<p>I’ll make sure to foot-note my non-quantifiable adjectives from here on out and qualify them as my opinion. </p>
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<p>Neither. I refer you to my original comment:</p>
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That would be nice. I’ll hold you to that. It will make it easier to identify particularly foolish statements on the thread.</p>
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<p>But you haven’t done the latter. You’ve basically just made the trivial assertion that a higher SAT score is better, ceteris paribus. But when you include the rest of the application, much of which is inherently subjective, the degree of difference in SAT scores becomes an important question.</p>
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<p>If a higher score is better than a lower score, the advantage afforded by the score’s being better will not disappear when holistic consideration occurs. I cannot argue the extent of this advantage, only its existance and significance (in the loosest sense of the latter term); for this, I refer people to the previously cited data to form their own subjective concepts.</p>
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<p>Except that the idea that it has a certain significance is reliant on the idea that the advantage should exist to a certain extent. But as you said, you have not argued that it exists to any particular extent, only that it exists.</p>
<p>In response to acknowledgments of my posts from two pages previously:</p>
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<p>The higher of the two scores should be considered as the better illustration of aptitude, reasoning, college readiness in quantified form, or whatever one wishes to call it – due the appreciable disparities between the two. One hundred and twenty-five point differences are of consequence and I fundamentally believe in the stepwise consideration of the test; that is, I believe that every ten-point distinction should be honored although certainly to a degree of appropriateness.</p>
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<p>Eventually, a college acceptance will transform into a non-acceptance if one’s score is dragged left on the score spectrum, which will resultingly come to constitute a seemingly small difference in overall achievement.</p>
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<p>From [The</a> Answer Sheet: What Does the SAT Test? - washingtonpost.com](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/13/AR2009091302546.html]The”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/13/AR2009091302546.html) - quoting Edward Carroll, Executive Director, Princeton Review</p>
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<p>Source: [Retesting</a> in selection: a meta-analysis of coachin… [J Appl Psychol. 2007] - PubMed result](<a href=“Retesting in selection: a meta-analysis of coaching and practice effects for tests of cognitive ability - PubMed”>Retesting in selection: a meta-analysis of coaching and practice effects for tests of cognitive ability - PubMed)</p>
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<p>Link: <a href=“http://users.ugent.be/~flievens/retestbias.pdf[/url]”>http://users.ugent.be/~flievens/retestbias.pdf</a></p>