zoe09

I have heard that the SAT is essentially an IQ test. I have also heard that the SAT measures academic achievement, test-taking strategies, and general SAT prep more accurately than IQ. Which is (more) true?
Is the SAT essentially an IQ test?
Just wondering

yawn

Knowledge of the English language doesn't have anything to do with IQ...

Arachnotron

Blah blah. The SAT questions require you to be able to reason out answers from unfamiliar situations. Practice and prep gets you ready for the format, but you've got to be smart enough to actually get the answers.

The SAT measures developed reasoning skills. The extent to which you can develop those skills depends heavily on IQ.

tokenadult

A typical IQ test and the SAT (even after the change in its registered trademark name) are both tests of school-related abilities, also known as "scholastic aptitude."

Below are some quotations I have previously posted elsewhere on College Confidential by eminent scholars on mental testing on resemblance of IQ tests to scholastic aptitude tests and on the limited scope of the item content of IQ tests.

"Most authorities feel that current intelligence tests are more aptly described as 'scholastic aptitude' tests because they are so highly related to academic performance, although current use suggests that the term intelligence test is going to be with us for some time. This reservation is based not on the opinion that intelligence tests do not reflect intelligence but on the belief that there are other kinds of intelligence that are not reflected in current tests; the term intelligence is too inclusive."

Hopkins, Kenneth D. & Stanley, Julian C. (1981). Educational and Psychological Measurement and Evaluation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, p. 364.


"There are, however, certain characteristics of age scores with which the reader should be familiar. For one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that the true mental age as we have used it refers to the mental age on a particular intelligence test. A subject's mental age in this sense may not coincide with the age score he would make in tests of musical ability, mechanical ability, social adjustment, etc. A subject has, strictly speaking, a number of mental ages"

Terman, Lewis & Merrill, Maude (1937). Measuring Intelligence: A Guide to the Administration of the New Revised Stanford-Binet Tests of Intelligence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 25.

Newer references make much the same point. The most definitive book on this subject is the recent book by James R. Flynn.

Amazon.com: What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect: James R. Flynn: Books

Everyone who thinks he understands what an IQ score means should read Flynn's book.

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Saedeas

If I have this right, I believe the old pre 1995 SAT corresponded to IQ closely enough that they were able to make a scale relating one to the other. The new SAT though doesn't correspond to IQ well enough to be accepted as an IQ test by any organizations that require one.

tokenadult

Old or new, the SAT sorts test-takers into roughly the same rank order as any major brand of IQ test (which is what "correlates to" means here). But for the old or new SAT, and for whatever brand of IQ test one talks about, all mental tests have error of estimation, and the same test wouldn't sort the same group of test-takers into exactly the same rank order on two separate occasions.

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Zenbadabing

This topic has already been settled in court. Twice.

Get updated.

lebronfor2008mvp

ok zen please enlighten me?

Zenbadabing

This topic has already been brought up and teared apart in countless threads. If you wish to be "enlightened", you can start by using the search function.

Zenbadabing

Apparently the correlation is strong enough to weed out the strongest applicants. Caltech and Harvard has average SAT scores of above 2100- coincidence? I think not.

J'adoube

If you substitute "resourcefulness" for "intelligence" the correlation will be better.

lebronfor2008mvp

Caltech and harvard having the highest sat averages is an independent fact. They could just be picking the highest sat scores which means nothing about being the strongest applicants. Then you forgot to link that to iq.

furyshade

the best way to put it i can think of is like this: if you do well on the SAT you are probably intelligent, if you are intelligent you won't necessarily do well in the SAT. there isn't anyone i know who did really well on the SAT that i thought didn't deserve their score but there were quite a few i thought were a lot smarter than their SAT score.

Zenbadabing

I didn't forget, i just don't like repeating my self. You want to see a link? Use the search function. There are certainly cases where an applicant is much more capable than his scores dictate-so thanks for pointing that out, Lebron. But surely you do not believe that the Strongest applicants have the lowest SAT scores? I'm quite sure a good number of IVY alumni who are now leaders of our industry did exceptionally well on the SAT. The SAT does not secure admission, but its a fat portion of it.

drusba

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.