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The original SAT test, created in the mid-1920s, which, like today, had a math and reading section, was based on (some say plagiarized from) Army Alpha tests used in WWI to identify potential officer candidates. Those Army tests were essentially carbon copies of the Stanford-Binet IQ tests from 1916, which in turn developed from the original IQ tests created in the early 1900s by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon.
The SAT was created by Carl Bringham, who had been in the army in WWI and worked with its tests. In the 1920s he was a professor of psychology at Princeton and created the SAT. Thus, it is correct to believe that SAT and IQ tests are related. Of course, if the early history was only the brief overview I just provided, you would not have the real story, particularly because the College Board does not like to mention the details of the test's early history.
You see, Bringham was a proud member of, and often article contributor to, the American Eugenics Society, a popular organization at the time whose founding principle was that those of Nordic and white anglo saxon heritage were the superior race in the US and its stated goal was to maintain that superiority and prevent any breeding between the superior group and any others, an evil the Society firmly believed would diminish the intelligence of America and ruin its proud heritage. Hated "minorities" included blacks, asians, Hispanics, Italians, Irish, jews, those of slavic descent, and essentially all immigrants except those who originated from England and Nordic countries. In publications, Bringham personally concluded that blacks were genetically inferior to all other races. In the army, Bringham saw that those who did best on the test were white upper crust Americans of Nordic/anglo saxon descent (which, for the most part, were most of the upper-crust Americans that existed at the time) with the result that all those "minorities" were mostly precluded from becoming officers. At the time, it did not occur to him that perhaps these "IQ" tests were biased in favor of such well educated test takers. He created and promoted his original SAT test for a singular purpose. He wanted top colleges to use it to determine admission with the hoped for result that all those low-level, hated minorities would not get into those colleges and mix with the superior race. Princeton and Cooper Union were among the first to try it but did not require it for admission. It did not really get off the ground until 1933 when Harvard adopted it as a basis for determining scholarships and shortly thereafter as an admissions test. The rest of the ivies quickly followed and within a few years large numbers of private colleges in the east adopted it. The infant College Board administered the test and Bringham was happily in charge of the test operations.
However, Bringham went astray. In the latter part of the 1930s, there was something going on in the world that called into question the popularity (and intelligence) of believing in a superior race -- the rise of Hitler and his mantra that the Germans were the superior race. Early critics of the SAT test asserted it was biased in favor of white upper crust males. Bringham suffered a change of heart and concluded that the test was biased and, believing it could not really be fixed, he began calling for its abolishment. As he wrote in a public letter to the President of Harvard, "If the unhappy day ever comes when teachers point their students towards these newer examinations [the SAT], then we may look for the inevitable distortion of education in terms of tests." Of course, this caused consternation among the heads of colleges with the College Board, which had invested large sums to promote the test and was enjoining substantial income as a result. However, Bringham quickly resolved their problem for them by dying.
So yes, the SAT is the sibling of the IQ test but one needs to question what either really measures.
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