posted
Man, I got no idea what you're talking about. I wanted my name to be kinda bland, I guess, something that everyone remembered because it was so random, so I thought back to Dark City where they all had names like Mr. Hand and such, and the main guy was named Mr. Book. That was about it.
Posts: 2258 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
I'm sorry, I mis-stated Bush's SAT score. Apparently he only got 1206 (verbal: 566; math: 640). He also graduated Yale with a C average.
Posts: 58 | Registered: Mar 2004
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It is out of 36. And EVERY high school student who's going to college in the South takes the ACT, so I doubt that top-third-percent thing.
I took both the SAT and the ACT, and the SAT had only one testing place near me, and it wasn't even in the same county. The ACT was at all the high schools in the county.
My score on SAT sucked, but I got the highest score in my school on the ACT.
posted
Can I be tacky here? I want to. And I took the test in the last six months, and I'm applying for grad school, so its relevant.
I don't remember the math score, I think it was 620/800 , but analytical was 5.5/6.0 (stupid grammar), and my verbal score on the GRE was 800/800. Woohoo! This actually lowers my opinion of the test!
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
The ACT only goes up to 32 now? It went up to 36 when I took it. I took the ACT and SAT. Don't know why, since the only school I was interested in used the ACT as its measure for admission, but. . . there you have it. I even remember the scores for those 2 tests too. I took the PSAT too, but since I was a couple of points shy of "Finalist" I do't remember what I got on that one. Oh well. Not like it matters anymore.
Edit: I see that's already been said about the ACT going to 36. .. .that's what I get for not going to and reading page 2 before posting. . . .
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Almost nobody in Utah takes the SAT, because all Utah colleges used the ACT for admissions. Those few that want to go to schools on the east or west coasts might take the SAT, as well as anybody who is trying for a National Merit scholarship. That last reason is why I took the SAT.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
Hah that Baby Bush score is hysterical. I scored higher than him in '92 before they re-centered it! (well higher combined) My verbal was higher than my math.
posted
And yeah, the SAT was recentered, so add about fifty points or so to anybody's score from back then to compare.
I just read an article about this, because the state of Virginia will now accept SAT scores in lieu of their Praxis exam for teacher certification, so if you need more specifics, I can look them up when I get home.
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Well, there are other requirements. This just takes care of the general knowledge exam. Then again, I don't live in VA, so I don't know . . .
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Jan 2003
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All right, time for me to brag then. I got a 33/36. Not the highest score in my school by any means. I believe a guy who graduated two years before me got a 35... O_o But our school was MASSIVE. Apparently. The University I'm going to right now has probably 1500 fewer people than my high school did.
Anyway, I also took the SAT 2, but I didn't do so well on that. I took Writing, French and... Dammit. Something else which I can't remember. I got an 800 on the writing section (my essay was about Lord of the Rings! ) but a bad score in French. I can't remember. I think I got like a 700 on whatever the heck the other test thing was. Wow. I really should look into that at some point. O_o
Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I HATED the SAT IIs. I *had* to take them in case I went to a UC school because they required them. I loathed the writing section and scored pretty bad. Did mediocre on the Math too because I was sick and didn't care. However the optional subject test I took was Chemistry. It was fun considering I'd had way more chemistry than the test writers I think. I got an 800 on that section. I bet the people looking at the scores were confused trying to figure out how I got the chem section perfect when I did so crappy on the math section.
I shouldn't point it out, but what the heck I'll be arrogant, I'm sure there's people who have done better than me here at the 'Rack
In '92 when I took the old SAT I mentioned above I was 13. 650 Verbal, 570 Math Grand total 1220... higher than our sitting President...
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Re: SAT v ACT, the SAT is much, much more common, and while there's a tendency for more advanced students to take it, exact practices vary widely by state/locality (as you may have noticed).
Everyone should read the Mismeasure of Man, by Gould. It does an excellent job of explaining why, except for certain broad general statements in cases of widely disparate scores, the SAT measures very little in terms of intelligence, and not much more in terms of taking tests like it well. The book explains a lot of other things as well; its a survey and critique of intelligence testing methods throughout history.
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Yeah, I agree with that. I'm struggling with my writing abilities here at school. The only thing is that I test well.
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I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I lived on an entire dorm Floor of National Merit Scholars. The only thing we all had in common was that we read. And this can be explained because the NMSC used to double the verbal score and add the math to give verbal more weight so more girls would qualify.
It was there I was introduced to Ender actually. In fact I know a guy who had one of the earliest ICQ "Ender" handles in existence. He got expelled from the school for LSD...
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It's such a truism that SATs are worthless. And one doesn't dare disagree, because people who don't test well or suffer from test anxiety will feel hurt by it if you suggest that they have some validity.
*shrug*
The thing is, though, that different high schools have vastly different standards, making grades an even more worthless indicator of success in college. For instance, I went to a very strict and rigorous Jesuit high school. Cs were truly the average grade, and we had high admission requirements, which meant that our C students would likely have been honor roll students in other schools. In fact, it very frequently happened that students would fail out of my school, only to end up immediately on the honor roll at whatever school they transferred to. It was murderously competitive as well. Because we were basically not allowed to take electives, though, we had fewer AP options than most other schools, so there went another possible GPA booster. Our only real options in that vein were AB Calculus and English, which I took, and Chemistry, Programming, Physics, History, and Spanish, which I did not. And you could not load up on all of them: you could only take these senior year, and you had to choose between chemistry or physics, you could not take both. Our valedictorian graduated with like a 3.7. I was much closer to a 2.0. I know in my heart that my 2.0 is worth more than many people's better GPAs, but cannot quantify that. However, I tested extremely well, and this got me scholarship offers I would not have gotten otherwise. And I was extremely successful in college, grad school, and beyond.
And I get frustrated at having to politely nod while everybody says these tests are worthless. They're almost the first academic indicator that ever saw any worth in me.
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Yeah, the SATs were re-centered. A year (two?) after I took the darn things!
Now you can get a 1600 without getting every single question right?! That's just wrong!
I almost took them again after the re-centering, just to see how I'd do. But I'd always done best on the antonyms, and they'd removed those, so I figured better not. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I went to a Jesuit high school as well (actually, Jesuit High School (in New Orleans)). It definitely wasn't that hard to make A's though (although we were academically one of the strongest schools in the state (edit: and every other which way too, for that matter)). And they let us take all the AP we wanted and we were required to take both chem and physics. Which makes alot more sense if your goal is to get your students into good colleges. Then again, this was only a few years ago, I don't know if things were different in the past.
But anyway, my standardized test scores pretty much reflected where I stood in relation to my peers in high school.
posted
They're changing the SATs again next year to make them harder. Partly why I want to do well the first time is so I don't have to take them again when they're harder!
quote:Now you can get a 1600 without getting every single question right?! That's just wrong!
This has always been possible. The 400 - 1600 is a scaled score and varies along with several factors.
-o-
I didn't say all Jesuit schools were like mine: I mentioned that it was Jesuit to give some sense of what type of mentality was behind it. I'm sure it was also significant that it was a Cuban Jesuit school, with all of the educational conservatism that implies.
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
The SATs aren't worthless. Reread what I said, and read the book. They are not very useful as anything but a general distinction. The "intelligence" difference between someone who gets a 1350 and a 1400 is exceedingly low; or rather, the ability to predict any intelligence difference based on the scores is. Even making distinctions based on differences of a hundred or more is relatively fruitless (1550 vs 1450, for instance). Now, the distinction in test taking skills is very clear -- I guarantee someone outscoring you by 100 has better test taking skills.
Much larger differences can be useful to make general distinctions. A person who scores 1550 is pretty likely to be more intelligent than someone who scores 1250 or 1300.
The problem isn't in using the SATs and other standardized tests to make general distinctions, its when people act as if a 10, or a 20, or a 50, or a 100 point difference somehow means one person is less intelligent than the other.
Re: school standings with SAT rankings -- yes, SAT scores will generally tend to approximate the perceived relationships in intelligence, particularly among groups of friends. You have had similar experiences, similar preparation, that sort of thing. So you approach the test in a similar manner. This removes some of the variations, and thus results in a somewhat more accurate reflection of relative "intelligence". However, there are also other forces at work -- schools in general tend to reward people for the same qualities the SATs reward people. Hence people who do well at school tend to do well on the SATs. This doesn't necessarily mean much about intelligence.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Ic: You're right. But this is analgous to people saying that, say, being overweight isn't as bad as it is purported to be. This doesn't have any bearing on those who are underweight, but they might still be affected by it, and feel that they need to gain more weight to be closer to the norm.
Ok, it's a bad analogy. What I mean to say is that for people who test badly, it's unfair to say that the SAT is the definitive test of intelligence. There's really nothing that is a definitive test of intelligence, and that is perhaps what should be being said instead of "The SAT is a poor, inapplicable test"
posted
I did much better on the ACT than the SAT. I think that's because the SAT penalizes for guessing, forcing me to second-guess myself too much.
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There are plenty of people who say that IQ tests aren't necessarily accurate either, but they definitely are more accurate than SAT tests. After all, if preparing for an SAT can improve one's score by a significant amount, than correlations between SAT marks and intelligence are obviously very loose.
Still, it is definitely true that in general, more intelligent people score higher on the SAT.
(Edited to add: Personally, I think that scores on the Verbal section are less likely to be influenced by preparation, whereas Math scores can be vastly improved by a bit of studying. When I took my PSATs in 11th grade, I had never seen an SAT test in my life, had no idea what it would be testing, and since I was on the advanced Math track, I hadn't done any SAT sort of math since 9th grade, so I only got a 1380 - and that was with a verbal score of 800, which means that my math score was only 580. Once I'd actually reviewed the Math - relearned it, so to speak - I shot up to 700. I'm pretty sure that if I went over the math more throughly, I'd be able to improve my score even more - but as tempting as the thought of getting a higher score is, I already have my scholarship for college, so what's the point? Obviously, though, if studying can influence scores so dramatically, the SAT can't be any sort of definite measure of IQ.)
posted
Gould likes IQ tests a lot less than he likes the SATs. People who interpret the SATs for professional reasons generally understand the limitations of the test, generally speaking. IQ tests, on the other hand, are often viewed as something magic when they're really worse than the SAT as commonly administered.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
fugu, I didn't say you said they were worthless . . . I was just commenting on a general attitude.
-o-
quote:After all, if preparing for an SAT can improve one's score by a significant amount, than correlations between SAT marks and intelligence are obviously very loose.
Well, I'm just speaking through my rectum here, but I suspect that preparation for IQ tests could also improve scores by a significant amount, but we aren't aware of it because nobody does that.
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
The people I know (myself included) who did well on the SATs often believe the test was worthless. Why? because they could beat it and come out on top of the percentiles by filling in some stupid circles.
Maybe it is some sort of collective "survivor's guilt". It isn't popular or Nice, to say you are smarter than most other people. Even when it is demonstrated to you abundantly that you can out think most the people around you most of the time. So you believe you are just average and that the test doesn't actually say much about who you really are, even if it is nice it got you into college. And you find places like Hatrack where you can discuss your ideas without people looking at like you like you just decended from another planet.
posted
Yeah, I agree. I didn't like talking about my test scores in HS, but when I got to college and started hanging out with... OK, I have to face it, with the nerds... I felt better telling them my score because it wasn't so weirdly high. One of my friends got the same score as me on the same day!! Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Interesting thing, I've taken the SATs 3 times once the old version and twice the new version. Clearly you can improve your score over time but when close together it doesn't change much.
Old SAT Age 13 Combined- 1220 650V 570M New PSAT Age 17 Combined- 1490 800V 690M (yes I added an 0 to the score for convienience) New SAT Age 17 Combined 1490 780V 710M New SAT Age 18 Combined 1470 790V 680M
Grin, I signed up it the last time because I was trying to break 1500 but I was physically in much poorer shape when I took it, had the flu or something.
AJ
Note: so even if you spot me 50 points or so on the combined score from the old test, over a 4 year time frame my score did go up ~200 points.
The math section I always ran out of time on so I had to guess about the last 7-10 questions.
quote: Our valedictorian graduated with like a 3.7
I can definitely see what you meant by saying that your 2.0 was worth more than that of some of those with better grades. The student ranked 1st in my class has a 4.5 GPA. She is, however, a known cheater amongst the students and will soon (I hope) be known as such amongst the teachers as well.
Also, I honestly do struggle in most of my classes. Math has never been a strength for me and my science marks tend to be lower as a consequence. I'm also just a lot slower in doing my work than a lot of the others in my classes because a) I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my work and b) since I tend to have a better understanding of more developed concepts or theories vs just the basics, it takes me longer to actually learn how to apply the fundamental steps that save time, etc.
It's just a little frustrating at times to be struggling along in the same classes as those who easilly make top-marks. Basically... I screwed up in my freshmen and sophomore years and ended up with a 3.4 in each. Hence, while I'm in the top 10 for this year alone (4.3 GPA for my junior year so far), I'm just barely in the top ten percent overall with a 3.7 GPA because I was... well, stupid. I'm working so much harder than I've ever done before so, while I'm ashamed of the two previous years, I'm proud to have come so far.
I'm still scared, though. Will admissions officers see the work I've done both in and out of school? Or will they go for the 4.3 GPA-getting, multi-sport athlete, student government officer who doesn't even have to work at what she does? (I know this girl, by the way. She's a good friend, but is the "perfect college applicant" in a very obnoxious way.)
... BTW, on the topic of ACT scores, I get mine two weeks from now and I am very nervous. Hopefully they'll be good and cancel out some report card induced badness?
Edit: BannaOJ, that's great! My marks went from a 1030 when I was 13 to a 1210 when I was 15 and then to a 1300 last year. How on earth did you manage to START with over 1200?!?
posted
I got a 32 on my ACT, and I always like to say my ACT score and GPA (3.20) were the same.
That wouldn't have helped if I'd wanted to go to a name school, but I spent a fabulous several years in college, have no student loans, and my parents never paid tuition, so in the end, it didn't really matter.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I often wonder what type of score I'd get now -- anyone know of an online test available anywhere? One where I don't have to pay money to find out my score?
Our school didn't allow for adding the extra points for calculating GPA for in-school, though when applying to college it was avaiable. Even so, of a graduating class of 112, we had five people tied for valedictorian at 4.0. They were all smart and hardworking, though -- it wasn't a weak school by any stretch. Maybe the lack of sports at the school affected the amount of time people spent doing homework?
posted
Interesting Pixie.... over the same period of time you had had 300 point jump, that seems compariable to my 200 point jump.
The problem being that they only have "gifted" 6th and 7th graders taking it for the most part.
I wonder how much a predictor of a pre-high school SAT would be for late high school test scores.
Maybe it is all about the quality of your elementary education and the vocabulary you have before high school that determines how well you do on the test....
My lawyer friend got her masters degree in philosophy from Oxford in less than four years, then graduated top of her class, including writing for the law review, from UCLA, and then nailed her bar exam on the first try.
Beat that, suckers. Oh yeah, and even being that smart and that cool, she still hangs out with me.
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, but analytical was 5.5/6.0 (stupid grammar), and my verbal score on the GRE was 800/800. Woohoo! This actually lowers my opinion of the test!
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) but a bad score in French. I can't remember. I think I got like a 700 on whatever the heck the other test thing was. Wow. I really should look into that at some point. O_o
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Grand total 1220... higher than our sitting President...![[Wall Bash]](graemlins/wallbash.gif)
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Partly why I want to do well the first time is so I don't have to take them again when they're harder!![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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