<p>
</p>
<p>Possibly offpoint, but there is a big difference with leaving answers blank, and not finishing. The SAT math problems, for example, increase in level of difficulty. For average joe/jane high schooler, the last ten problems will be extremely difficult, and more time won't help that student to solve those problems. The student is much better off spending time rechecking the "easy" and middle difficulty problems to increase his/her score.</p>
<p>"The SAT has always favored students who can afford coaching over those who cannot, students from wealthy suburban schools over those from poor urban school systems, and males over females."</p>
<p>AND</p>
<p>"There are people that look at SAT scores and think this kid is more capable or smarther than another. Maybe. Sometimes, many times, it is just circumstances that have led to a difference in SAT scores.</p>
<p>When a school, especially a school that can pick and choose who it wants, accepts kids with low SAT scores, maybe, they actually see something in the kids that SAT scores don't capture.
It doesn't mean the student body is weaker."</p>
<p>Truer words have never been spoken! I agree completely!</p>
<p>But I also agree with this post:</p>
<p>"The bottom line here is that, for a really smart kid, attending an institution where classes have been pitched to those with lesser academic skills may not be a good idea. So, looking at SATI scores might very well be a useful thing to do when choosing a college."</p>
<p>The SAT is a rough predictor of success. It is not a guarantee of success or failure. The same is also true of a mean gpa score. </p>
<p>SAT scores are best used by applicants to predict likelihood of being admitted: reach, match, safety. But if I were an applicant, I would not use them to predict likelihood of success in college. </p>
<p>Success in college is a measure of native intelligence, hard work, maturity, self esteem, self discipline, focus and ability to avoid distractions.</p>
<p>The skill set needed for a math or engineering major is not the same as a skill set needed for an english or history major.</p>
<p>Sadly, SAT scores are used and abused by many people.</p>
<p>Tarhunt, thanks for the post, and the sharing of your experiences.</p>
<p>You too Swansong.</p>
<p>I've posted the following on other threads, but what can I say? I like it. From one of the dean's mouths.</p>
<p>He talks about SAT scores, a lot more, and you get to see Amherst make some decisions.</p>
<p>I also like this story about UCLA. Should UCLA be looked down upon because it chooses kids with lower SATs and ends up with lower average SAT scores?</p>
<p>Amherst is a really fine school.</p>
<p>I also think this is very true:</p>
<p>"It is not the least surprising that kids with good high school GPAs tend to perform better in college (using GPA as the measurement) than kids with low high school GPAs, assuming their SATI scores are comparable. Skills are not hard work, and hard work tends to triumph, in the end. I do think it's important, however, to make the point that college GPA is not a perfect measure of success."</p>
<p>The trick for an admissions officer is to admit students that will bring something to the table of learning. At some large state schools, even schools that enjoy a high ranking, they tend to be more concerned with raw scores than with the uniqueness of a student. The sheer volume of applications and the number of admitted students sort of prohibits a closer look at students than what a small liberal arts college may be able to do, or may in fact desire for one reason or another.</p>
<p>If I were an admissions officer I would spend a good deal of the time trying to glean an applicant's character from whatever sources I could find.</p>
<p>The OP asked about using SAT scores of colleges to "help" in a college search. For reasons well described in some of the replies posted since I last posted, I think that is a good idea. However, I don't advocate just going down the list of colleges by SAT interquartile ranges and choosing all of the top colleges and no other colleges to apply to. My oldest son is gradually developing his college application list. (He has two years yet to finalize it.) He will surely skip over some colleges at the top of the list (by ANY criterion) to add in other colleges that HE likes to his application list. Most applicants do the same. He takes note of where other high school students he knows are applying.</p>
<p>This thread has given me a good idea for a useful MS or Ph.D. candidate study. I wonder if teachers and/or students can predict the SATI success of their classmates using factors seen in class other than GPA. If so, it would suggest that the SATI does measure some intangible classroom performance and/or personal traits.</p>
<p>If I ever get any data from that, I'll post it.</p>
<p>I'd love to see it.</p>
<p>As one who frequently posts standardized test data in making comparisons of various colleges, I clearly believe that there is a strong correlation between student body strength and average or 25/75 test scores. However, my view is not that standardized test scores alone are the critical determinant, but rather what these scores likely represent about the rest of a student's application and how this translates into the overall strength of a school's student body. This is well explained above by kluge, tarhunt, and others. There will always be exceptions (and thus the room for anecdotes), but for looking at an entire institution, the overall institutional data set for standardized test scores has far greater value and IMO validity. </p>
<p>With regard to the example of high school GPAs and the differences and what this means in a classroom setting., if the objective is to assemble a strong class of students, modest differences in GPA can still mean large differences in student quality. Obviously first, GPAs differ radically from school to school, district to school district, etc. Second, with all the different levels of grade inflation in today's high schools, a GPA of 3.5 very well could be significantly different than a 3.6 or 3.7. Third, the GPAs don't reflect the strength of the curriculum that the students faced. </p>
<p>Re the college search process, students will make some decisions that will frame how they go about their search, eg, they decide they want to go more/less than 100 miles away or they want an urban/suburban/rural campus or they want great social/athletic scene or they want small/medium/big/really big size or even they want to go to a Ivy college or one ranked no worse than X by USNWR (sad, but happens all the time as we all know) or any number of other criteria. Once these broad parameters have been set, using 25/75 ranges makes absolute sense in helping to identify schools that are reaches, matches, safeties. At that point, it is up to the student to dig deeper and also consider the other parts of his/her application that will be strong or weak and if he/she will be competitive in the process at ABC college.</p>
<p>Yes, Amherst is a fine school, with a No. 2 overall rank and stellar program rankings and even an accepted abbreviation (AWS) to prove it. Among the liberal arts colleges, it has the highest range of 50th percentile SAT scores (1330-1530.) Obviously, there is some connection between these facts. </p>
<p>Perhaps Amherst intends to expand its outreach more into lower socio- economic areas and search for the diamonds in the rough with ability and talent not evidenced by 1400-plus test scores. But you can bet this will be a painstakingly careful process, designed to ferret out the best and brightest in a way that does not threaten the overall brand-name status of the college. One of the reasons that highly ranked colleges and universities are so sought after is that parents and prospective students invest a certain amount of trust that the academic program will be pitched at a high level, that highly skilled students will not be "shortchanged," as Tarhunt put it, despite a wider range of diverse student qualifications (for want of a better word) in the classroom. </p>
<p>As a parent trying to guide a h.s. junior towards colleges to visit and consider, I really can only look at SAT, ACT scores and percentage in top-10 percent of class to get an idea about the range of abilities of the student body at a given college. I don't get to peruse the apps of the admitted students to check out their work ethic, unique talents, personality or drive. We might be able to pick up on such vibes through visits, but you can't visit 100 colleges.</p>
<p>Amherst has said they are going to try to enroll more kids from the lower economic strata.</p>
<p>I think I put up two anecdotes on the thread. Obviously, the famous people one is a pretty low data point. </p>
<p>The Berkeley student one, was representative of the lower students they take with low SAT scores. The link had quite a large sample. It was informative to me. </p>
<p>I'm not apologizing for that one at all.</p>
<p>Actually, I'm not apologizing for the famous people one either. My guess is a lot of famous people have lower SAT scores than a lot of students in college. </p>
<p>Tarhunt, maybe you can extend your study to include people in every day life. Hundreds of random people. Can you tell their SAT scores?</p>
<p>I never read the book, "the Millionaire Next Door", or whatever the title is :), but I believe it is stated in the book that the average millionaire has an average SAT score around 1180.</p>
<p>I'm not saying every millionaire is smart, but there is a correlation between kids from wealthy families and SAT scores, and I llike that data point about millionaires too. :)</p>
<p>Tarhunt - thanks for the observations - very true, in my opinion. The thing is, the studies which gauge college "success" set a bar which is both low and understandably affected by a lot of things which are almost completely independent of academics, so that a lot of people fail to achieve that "success" for reasons having little to do any objective qualities assessable during the admissions process. "Success" is little more than a default, and "diligence" is a major factor in achieving that default. </p>
<p>There was a lengthy discussion in a bygone thread about what constituted a "qualified" applicant to a selective school. My opinion was that a student with about a 1200/1800 SAT or its equivalent should be able to complete four years at any college in America and graduate. Not necessarily in any major; not necessarily with honors, but graduate. Some will not, because they won't work hard enough, or will choose a course of study for which they are not well suited, such as a hard science or engineering major. But they have enough basic "smarts" to get the job done - certainly at any large state university.</p>
<p>But that doesn't mean that a student with an 1800 SAT is likely to be a good match for Yale or Duke or Caltech. There will be some who are - and those students will have 4.0 HSGPA's (or close to it) and demonstrate by other means their ability to handle the challenge - but most will find it a poor fit, making their way through a selected major by dint of a lot of hard work and/or (as in the case of some recruited athletes) a lot of tutorial assistance. Most students with a 2000 SAT will tend to fit better at more selective colleges; 2200, even more so. That doesn't mean any particular kid will get up in time to attend class, or finish his or her paper, or any of the other things that go into collegiate "success" - just that, on average, handling the academic part of it won't be as big of a challenge for the higher test scorers as it is for others.</p>
<p>Maybe, I should clarify one thing. I'm not saying the high SAT kids aren't capable, or intelligent. I'm saying the lower SAT scorers at the top schools are capable and intelligent too. Otherwise they wouldn't have been accepted into the school. To look at a school that takes these lower SAT kids and then denigrate the student body of the school is ridiculous.</p>
<p>Many lower SAT scorers at schools that aren't the top schools are also very capable, and intelligent too.</p>
<p>dstark-
regarding the question about SAT scores in post #17...
If you take say the top 100 universities in the US News list and calculate the correlation between graduation rate and say SAT 75th percentile, it will be quite high I am sure...maybe in the .8 to .9 range.</p>
<p>For students in the same school what you have to do is classify your students by sat range, say 25 point ranges, and calculate the mean sat scores and graduation percent within each range. Say this yields 25 ranges and 25 pairs of scores (graduation percent for students within that range and average SAT score for students within that range). Then calculate the correlation.</p>
<p>At one school, the correlation (Multiple R) was about .85 (rquare = .72, which means that 72% of graduation percent is attributable to SAT).</p>
<p>Above was explained to me by a relative who works in higher ed administration.</p>
<p>I don't know offhand the correlation between family income and SAT but it is probably fairly high. Smart kids probably have smart parents. Smart parents generally make more money. High SATs cause high family income.</p>
<p>For students in the same school what you have to do is classify your students by sat range, say 25 point ranges, and calculate the mean sat scores and graduation percent within each range. Say this yields 25 ranges and 25 pairs of scores (graduation percent for students within that range and average SAT score for students within that range). Then calculate the correlation.</p>
<p>Collegehelp, most schools aren't too free with that information. :)</p>
<p>"I don't know offhand the correlation between family income and SAT but it is probably fairly high. Smart kids probably have smart parents. Smart parents generally make more money. High SATs cause high family income."</p>
<p>A lot of people think that. I haven't seen anything that says the above is true.</p>
<p>ATLANTA (AP) Who gets to be a millionaire? Conventional wisdom says it's the students who get straight A's, blow the roof off the SAT and go to Ivy League colleges. Or maybe it's the children born into wealthy families with brilliant connections. </p>
<p>Neither is typical, says Thomas J. Stanley, who surveyed 1,300 millionaires for his new book, "The Millionaire Mind," due out Monday. </p>
<p>The average millionaire made B's and C's in college, Stanley says. Their average SAT score was 1190 - not good enough to get into many top-notch schools. In fact, most millionaires were told they were not intellectually gifted, not smart enough to succeed. "I find no correlation between SAT scores, grade point averages and economic achievement. None," said Stanley. "Admittedly, there are some very bright people in the data, but not many."</p>
<p>Many people on this thread don't think an average SAT score of a student body of 1190 is high enough for them or their kids. :)</p>
<p>dstark:</p>
<p>The study I was thinking of wouldn't happen for some time. It would take an MS or PhD candidate who is interested in pursuing it, and I haven't the time or inclination at this point. What I ghouth might be interesting is predictions based on guesses by peers and teachers who know students' classroom and non-classroom performances, traits, and characteristics. I hadn't really given a lot of thought to the factors that might be measured, but that would have to be part of the study, I think, for it to be most useful. </p>
<p>I guess what occurs to me is that I've been able to pretty much predict my own children's success on standardized tests, and the results from my high school were no suprise to anyone, even though they didn't always track exactly with class rank.</p>
<p>BTW, it's been a long time since I've seen this study and I have no idea how to lay my hands on it, but I believe there is a pretty strong relationship between intelligence and income. Entrepreneurs are a different animal, entirely, and while there are clearly some very, very smart ones (Bill Gates and Michael Dell come to mind), it's also possible to make millions by delivering drywall to the right places or finding a better way to serve the waste management market. I think you need to discover something that other people need, and then take the risks you need to take to serve that need. Nine out of ten, as I recall, fail, but the other 10% are probably going to be very well off, indeed.</p>
<p>I would raise a HUGE red flag, though, about the idea that high income families, with smart parents, produce intelligent children because of heredity. Certainly, there is some of that going on, but environment plays a huge role. A kid who comes to kindergarten with a 6,000 word vocabulary is going to be able to comprehend and learn to read faster than a kid with a 500 word vocab. And vocabulary, at that age, is built by listening. There is also a whole world of developmental psych. which is outside my area of expertise that suggests a range of environmental factors that affect neural function at very early ages, and even before birth.</p>
<p>I DO think it is true that heredity PLUS the environmental factors generally accompanying good family income tend to produce better students.</p>
<p>Tarhunt, I pretty much agree with your last post.</p>
<p>BTW, it's been a long time since I've seen this study and I have no idea how to lay my hands on it, but I believe there is a pretty strong relationship between intelligence and income. Entrepreneurs are a different animal, entirely, and while there are clearly some very, very smart ones (Bill Gates and Michael Dell come to mind), it's also possible to make millions by delivering drywall to the right places or finding a better way to serve the waste management market. I think you need to discover something that other people need, and then take the risks you need to take to serve that need. Nine out of ten, as I recall, fail, but the other 10% are probably going to be very well off, indeed.</p>
<p>I don't know this for an absolute fact. And I don't know Bill Gates or Larry Ellison lol. (Two college dropouts). I think risk taking plays a huge part in making money. So I agree with you. I think it is a very underrated trait when looking at people who make money. Most people I know who have made a lot of money are risk takers. I also think passion, motivation, and the willingness to work hard are usually important. Just wanting to make a lot of money helps. :) Some smart people aren't interested in money.
As far as intelligence goes, I think it helps. A 1190 score, especially before recentering, put you where, in the top 10%. These millionaires aren't dummies too often.</p>
<p>Tarhunt, I'm a human and I have my perceptions. Somebody tells me he struggled in school or went to a no-name college and I do wonder how bright that person is. (SAT scores never come up however). Anyway, I have been surprised by how bright some people are when you get to know them, including a few people who never graduated from college.</p>
<p>We are influenced by who we know and these people have influenced me and the way I look at schools and test scores.</p>
<p>The irony is that there is a very large percentage of students coming out of top private high schools/top private colleges and who have had exposure to wealth most of their lives who ARE NOT good risk takers. Much of their training and education and environment teaches them about risk management and professional status in industries like investment banking, law, medicine, etc. But the truly big money is made by the entrepreneur who exploits a market opportunity and then extends it on a very large scale. Frankly, one of my pet peeves with students coming from private high school school environments (and often from private elite universities) is that they don't have enough of an entrepreneurial nature. The student from ABC Ivy League college is not likely to be the one starting that drywall business. More commonly, I have seen that it is the XYZ State U student who is willing to take that risk.</p>