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Having spent way too much time studying the nature and testing of intelligence for psychology, I can point out that the very definition of intelligence is shaky. The SAT and ACT (as well as IQ tests, I believe) measure a particular subset of intelligence, in the realm of verbal skills and mathematical reasoning. Different types of practical and emotional intelligence as well as determination and many other things also factor into what we perceive as someone's intellect. These standardized tests supposedly correlate very weakly with everything (the conventional measures of success and intelligence, I mean) except first semester college grades, which is all they really were intended to measure.
Which is why, no, I don't think the SAT and ACT are quite as useful an indicator of intelligence as they treated in the admissions process. But I'm not volunteering to think up any better national, standardized, unbiased, valid, reliable test!
Last edited by Avalanche Lily; 07-06-2009 at 12:41 PM.
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