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1460 SAT and rejected at Cornell has been trending on Twitter the last few days.
https://twitter.com/maiab/status/1736766407348814091?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
A lot of the takes were about him being rejected because he is white. The thing I find interesting is the condensing of the top 1-5% of scores into a smaller score range over time. My guess since the score differences look smaller it lets schools select more for other characteristics rather than pure mental horsepower. Getting a perfect score today or something that looks similar 1550 plus will not differentiate people as much.
Elon Musks apparently had a 1400 SAT. Bill Gates a 1590. Obviously they are both smart but I feel fairly confident Bill Gates is significantly higher pure IQ. With the way normal distributions operate I feel confident saying there is a big intelligence difference between the two but on the current system Musks would probably get 1580 and Gates 1600.
Digging thru SAT history there have been a few key years where the test had significant changes.
1993/1995 - some test changes but the big thing was a recentering to get scores back to about 1000 from 900. Before this update a median score at HYPS would have been 1370-1400 area. Bill Gates 1590 would have really stood out and guaranteed alone admittance to Harvard.
2005 - attempts to move the test closer to high school curriculum and eliminated analogies and quant comparisons. My guess is this made the test less of a pure intelligence test and closed gaps between highest performers and mid range.
2016 - more I guess dumbing down and trying to make the test more like what they did in high school. Multiple choice questions went from 5 options to 4 options and wrong answers no longer carried a penalty. This would make educated guessing far better.
Here is the current percentile for different scores.
https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-percentiles-and-score-rankings
1500 is now solidly top 2%. 1450 is top 4%.
Here is the data from 2003
https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-historical-percentiles-for-2005-2004-2003
1490-1600 was solidly differentiating between the top 1%.
I believe the new scoring significantly hurts the outliers at standing out from the test. And likely hurts the highest performing white, Asian, and Jewish males at getting into the most selective schools since the difference between a 1530 and 1600 SAT score just doesn’t seem that big statistically. It feels to me that studying for the new exam and learning test taking skills are more important today. Perhaps, you think this isn’t a big deal that the raw mental abilities of the top 1.2% and .3% of the population isn’t important and allowing schools to select more on other criteria is more important. My opinion for the very top programs finding the Bill Gates level intelligence matters. Men also have different intelligence bell curves (more people on the extremes) therefore on net I believe it hurts males.
I am also curious how someone who is really good at math could stand out in today’s environment. The SAT and a few good AP math scores wouldn’t seem to be enough. Do you need to have the opportunity to compete in high-end math tournaments?
Personally, the new testing I believe would have significantly effected my life. Coming from a lower class white family being able to crush the SAT gave me a way to stand out for a relatively cheap costs.
I am seeing a median SAT score of 1520 at Harvard and a median of 1440 at UMICH. My guess is back in the day that gap was much higher.
This really isn't very impressive. Looks like a Verbal 660 and a Math 800 (or close enough), anyone who takes even a cursory interest in reading/writing in the English language and isn't failing at mathematics should be able to match it. If it was 1560 maybe this dude would have a point, with his current scores it looks like he just got filtered due to there being better candidates.
Yes, and all US colleges weight against math and in favor of verbal scores because perfect math scores are so much more common.
Look at the GMAT. Tons of Indians and Chinese hit perfect scores on the quant section (50/51 is like 85th percentile, a perfect 51 is barely 95th percentile). Meanwhile, even 45/51 on the verbal section is 99th percentile.
So the GMAT - at the top level - is essentially a verbal IQ competition and HSW etc will even let you drop a few points on quant if you have an extremely impressive verbal score.
I honestly think this is bad test design though. The scaled scores should correspond to roughly the same percentiles for both quant and verbal, doing otherwise just means the same score on Quant vs Verbal doesn't mean the same thing in relation to your peers also applying for the same programs, e.g. currently a 48/51 verbal is amazing, while a 48/51 quant is very meh.
It's not like this is hard to fix, if necessary you can just increase the number of questions on the quant section while keeping the same time limit for the sections, that way you can tell the super good quant people from the merely good quant people (the former will solve questions faster, so get more of them done in the allotted time) while right now basically everyone with a command of the materials gets close to full marks and you can't distinguish the "amazing" from the "merely very good".
I'm glad I never had to do the GMAT, I think I'd do well but it's just ugh, like why...
Does the relationship between problem solving speed and g scale infinitely? Can you really just take a dozen easy matrices, give everyone 4 minutes and get the same ranking as if you take a bunch of hard problems and give the same people a couple hours to do them? I’m skeptical.
I guess it seems likely they’ve considered that solution.
Probably not infinitely, but it probably scales farther than the current tests are pushing it. I remember when i took the SAT I thought they gave you way too much time on the math section. I finished every question and double checked all my answers in less than half the time allotted so i just put my head down at that point.
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