jakeiscool

i agree that its "more indicative of wealth and determination/preparation"
not necessarily intelligence.
there are many smart kids who dont push themselves and there are many who are at a disadvantage in terms of resources and their surroundings.

continuing on the notion that non-native speakers are a a disadvantage for CR, im starting to feel math may be more objectively indicative. think about it, people all over the world have learned math, but not everyone has learned english/vocab/grammar skills, etc.
just a thought lol

hmmmmmmm

Again, a test where people regularly make 50-300 point improvements in any and all categories doesn't speak to very much of how absolutely intelligent the test taker is. I think determination is the key factor; otherwise people wouldn't be able to make such drastic increases as regularly as they do.

dshinka

"Wow this person must be a great test taker!", or "Wow this person must be really smart!"

False dichotomy. I think "Wow, this person is probably lying since the people that score a 2400 on the SAT in one sitting is something like a few hundred a year and if they're not lying, they probably studied a whole lot."

That being said, I think a combination of intelligence and hard work are needed to perform well on the SAT or ACT.

mowmow721

Who gives a crap?

The SAT/ACT will measure one, or both, of two things. How naturally intelligent the taker is, or how much he/she worked on preparing for the test.

Both qualities are highly esteemed, and equal, I would say, in the field of academics. A naturally intelligent person, or a hard worker can both break 2100. A naturally intelligent AND hard working person is the scores you see above 2300.

But I have never seen a unintelligent lazy person score high on the SAT. Period. So who cares, since the purpose of the test is to qualify people for admission anyway? If you're twice as slow but work twice as hard as the person next to you, why shouldn't you be given the same opportunity to succeed.

IntangibleGator

Study: SAT a good measure of IQ | Science Blog

cjgone

It means they're a good test-taker\ fairly intelligient if they have a high SAT score. A high ACT means they know a very broad amount of information from hard-work. I find that higher ACT scores are more impressive than high SATs.

High IQ doesn't mean much anyway. Just more worthless segregation and bias.

eg2333

Those who are using score improvements as counterarguments. Don't you believe that IQ can be improved?

Really, it makes no sense to say that score improvements are because of "hard work". If you're saying that the SAT doesn't measure knowledge in its entirety as the ACT does or other subject tests, then how would acquiring more knowledge and "working hard" improve your score. Don't you think its more plausible to say that the student's reasoning abilities have improved?

legendofmax

In my experience, they tend to be pretty good measures. Everyone I know with a high SAT score is pretty intelligent. I don't know of too many with really high scores who are actually unintelligent and just worked hard. The people who have very high scores with prep usually had pretty high scores without prep to begin with, and just wanted to crank out the extra mile.

So I'd say the test does have some merit.

mj rothlan

To some extent, it does. Most of the "naturally intelligent people" I know score very highly on it, while the people who do well in school but more due to hard work score less highly.

Unholy Sigma

Legend and mj essentially sum up my views about the issue... I will add that, in my opinion, CR measures depth of thought while Math measures attention to detail, both of which are qualities truly intelligent people posses.

Ranka

The SAT puts too much weight on the english sections. It is not an accurate depection of intelligence. Since I am intelligent when it comes to facts and logic but when it comes to prose i am horrible. I personally got a 770 in math while getting around 600 in the english sections. Students in my school have gotten better scores than me, mainly due to english proficiency, even though they arent the brightest bulbs.

disgradius

Firstly, like ranka said, it does put alot of emphasis on language. Not that language can't measure intelligence or logical thinking but it is kinda narrow. The math section is ridiculously easy too.

I'd say the SAT is more of an indicator of 1) where a person can be in 2) "built up intelligence"

I don't think intelligence is entirely determined from birth. I think it can be trained from mind games and puzzles, etc. To recognize patterns or reason correctly does take practice and I think most would correlate these two abilities to intelligence. Naturally, some develop these abilities more easily than others. So for the SAT, its probably a measure of hard work x intelligence. For the highest score ranges, you do have to be at least fairly intelligent besides relatively hard working to break into. But the rest can probably be achieved with lots of hard work.

And for those saying that SAT measures wealth: I won't deny that classes do help. It takes longer to learn things by yourself but the level of SAT classes is quite low so it'll probably only push you up to about 2100 or so. Past that you only have yourself to rely on. The SAT really isn't so hard that you have to pay to get high scores. If you're studying just for the test, then I can just say give up. Hard work improves your score but its over a very long time. All of the 2400s I know (myself included) have been avid readers and enjoyed puzzles from an early age. After chatting with them, I've found that few really thought of themselves as especially smart in early years but as time went on, progressed to higher ranks within their classes/community. Seriously, memorizing vocab, etc can only help so much. You do kind of have to condition yourself to be used to certain patterns and you can only do that in the required time by exposing yourself to them often.

Reading some philosophy helps imo. Anything that develops logic will help. Its not a pure logic test but logic will help on just about any test.

Avalanche Lily

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!

Rishmeister

I've got an idea... let's add another dimension to the topic. Which SECTION do you think measures intelligence the MOST? I'd say math. Granted, I am worlds better in math, but overthinking on the SAT can screw you over. Overthinking, in my opinion, does NOT signify stupidity; it represents intelligence more than anything else.

Staind

I think the SAT's do correlate with intelligence. If you are INTELLIGENT, you will know to study/prepare beforehand. and reading, imo, is the most indicative,b ecause you can't really study for it, comprehension and logic are key.but once again this is just my opinion