If you have a child applying to college, you probably remember that getting an 800 on the SATs was almost unheard of. Are kids so much smarter now? How are so many students with perfect or near perfect SATs getting rejected?
If you just now have children old enough to apply to college you probably missed the information about the re-centering of SATs that happened just about when you were having your baby. They did not raise the ceiling and introduce 900s. But instead they made scores at the upper range less meaningful.
Did you know that those who scored a verbal 730 in the old days would have an 800 today? That’s right. That’s why it seems like so many geniuses are not getting into school. Turns out that a Verbal 800 is really a 730. Well a 730 is just not that hard to get.
And for math, A 780 is a 800 today.
Even more astounding-if you have a Verbal 600 today, that would have been a Verbal 530 before. Well 500s would have taken you out of the running for competitive schools. Today that just looks like a score in the 600s. A 600 in the old days, barely ok, would be a 670 today. Wow!
So, someone who scored a 1510 in the old days would have a 1600 today. Not bad! Unfortunately recentering rendered scores in the upper range pretty meaningless because it no longer differentiated-the ceiling was lowered.
Do you have any hard proof/articles to support this claim?
Also, for the record, a 730 is not “just not that hard to get”. That’s still going to be in/above the 90th percentile. The average score for each section is around a 500.
I don’t know if the exact numbers lost account is quoting are right though (the little table on wikipedia shows the scores going down over the last 10 years). I think the increase in SAT prep is the real reason.
I don’t think they are shut out of schools, they just may not get into every school to which they apply. The ivies are not safeties for anyone, even with perfect scores.
No the re-centering of the SATS is not new. But it is also something that current parents may not know about since t many may have just graduated from college when it happened. So if they are comparing their own scores to the current scores, and thinking their generation must have been lower achieving, this is a reminder about the reasons that is unlikely. That alone isn’t the problem. At the same time, many high schools expanded on the number of levels of each class they offer. So the curriculum is geared more towards each student’s achievement level. Instead of getting a “C” in a course pitched too high, each student can choose a lower level class that will yield an “A”. So even aside from grade inflation, grades don’t necessarily highlight which students are strongest since there is a ceiling effect. And, while some school weight the various levels differently, the weighted GPA’s still suffer from the ceiling effect since within each class category (honors, etc) most kids are getting "A"s. So there are a ton of those in weighted classes with As.
It’s also the SAT prep. When I was in HS (80’s!!) at a top-ranked public school, nobody ever studied for the sat. We just went and took it. No one even stressed about it. Now -especially in affluent communities- students start prepping for college admissions before they’re even in high school. It’s crazy.
You know that the raw to scale scored conversion is based on relative scores too, right? The SAT isn’t like a test at school where theoretically everyone can get the same score. You can’t blanket say “everyone that would have been between 730 and 800 are now at 800” because people’s scores affect each other to some extent. Also a 2100 is still 96th percentile. I would consider that to still be pretty impressive.
yes, I’m good on stats. Did not mean to pick it to death. Point: Scores in the 700s today may seem more impressive than they are-the re-scoring resulted in more higher scores. Generally speaking. There is a ceiling effect. a ceiling effect means that the scores don’t differentiate as well on the high end.
This depends on what you mean by shut out. D got rejected from Harvard with perfect SAT scores. She got into numerous other elite schools but she was shut out of Harvard. But she is going to Stanford - woohoo!
While it is more common to hear of those perfect 2400 SAT scores, it is still a feat in a single sitting. I don’t think you need to be a genius to score a 2400. But a true genius likely has other academic merits or awards at high levels that speak to their genius than a mere SAT score. So, the short answer is yes, perfect scores get rejected, but I doubt true geniuses are shut out. Which backs up the holistic admissions approach to looking at more than test scores.
I was going to answer the OP’s question as phrased in the subject heading by saying that anyone truly “shut out” in the college admission process can’t be much of a “genius.” Someone with those scores can get into many, many colleges, even with mediocre (or worse) grades. The student must have applied imprudently, and therefore can’t be altogether omniscient. He or she might have gotten every answer correct on a particular test on a particular day, but obviously made more serious errors when devising an application strategy.