I can’t seem to link it, but there is an article on Yahoo news that says OJ feels like she is a victim. She is apparently not speaking to her parents and the poor thing is living at her boyfriend’s house in Malibu. Sorry if that sounds harsh but I don’t believe for a second she is a victim.
In 2018, 20 students in the Cherry Creek (CO) district got a perfect score on either the ACT or SAT; one guy got it on both. That’s just one district, although a very wealthy one.
“Actually, is it technically illegal for a coach to take money to designate a kid as a recruit?”
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@observer12 – As a practical matter, something like this has to be done under the table. So you almost always would have tax violations (unreported income, bogus charitable deductions) and money laundering.
But if you paid off the coach above the table, you might only have NCAA and university rule violations.
The main federal crime here is “honest services fraud.” Like RICO, mail fraud and wire fraud, honest services fraud can be pretty murky. It often can look like it is making a federal crime out of something that is mostly private bad conduct.
The other current college sting regarding HS basketball recruits is really an example of this. There, the Feds are making federal crimes out of what are mostly NCAA rule violations.
Significantly more kids get perfect score on ACT than SAT.
ACT scores get rounded. 35.6 = 36
36 is highest but not perfect.
A 1580 on the SAT is still 1580.
How many people prepped in the 1970s, though? Maybe a few run-throughs in out of a book was more or less the norm. Not months or even years of one on one tutoring. It was probably more predictive then.
I think we are all vastly overestimating how much schools rely on standardized test scores, once again.
I am not disagreeing with your posts. But sometimes students or their parents exaggerate. There were only 745 1600 scores in the world. Globally.
The College Board reported for 2018–
“Out of the 2.13 million test-takers, 745 scored a 1600 on the SAT”
To think 20 came from one small county in Colorado would make me suspicious to investigate further if true.
Also with 37000 high schools and 37000 valedictorians etc. 1600 is 99th percentile among that group alone. And we know many,if not most, came from other groups. The amount of students with both of these characteristics , unlike we would be led to believe here on cc, is so infinitesimal to not even warrant a discussion.
“Not months or even years of one on one tutoring. It was probably more predictive then.”
I wouldn’t assume that. It was probably a better measure of general intelligence then (since that is what it was designed to be). But a score that reflects studying for months – and coming from a family where that is expected – might well be a better predictor of first-year college grades, which have at least as much to do with diligence as they do with intelligence.
2,235 out of over 2.1 million worldwide received 36s on the ACT in 2016. They sent a letter stating that. So yes, it’s easier to get a perfect score on the ACT.
@PetraMC Even so do the math. Do those statistics indicate easy or massive score inflation. Especially with 1600 as the proxy. 7% of USA high schools would likely produce 1 single score of this level. 93% would have zero. And that doesn’t include international test takers.
It’s not that I disagree with the premise. But the stats don’t tell that exact story. Yes 50000 students score 1500 or better. There’s only 48000 seats at all schools with less than 30% admission rates.
More than twice as many students apply to college today as they did in 1980.
That’s the math problem.
Oh yes, I agree, it’s still a tiny number! I only pointed out the ACT/SAT top scorers bc it was the first time I noticed the big difference.
@PetraMC I think many of us are struggling to understand how to navigate this all. Thanks for your point of view for sure!
Probably because there are fewer possible scores on the ACT than the SAT. http://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/ACT-SAT-Concordance-Tables.pdf shows that 36 ACT concords to four possible SAT scores (1600, 1690, 1580, 1570). Other ACT scores each concord to three to five SAT scores.
An analogous situation exists in high school grading systems. It is easier to earn an A in an A-F grading scale than to earn a 100 in a percentile grading scale, assuming same course difficulty and grading standards otherwise.
A practical application of the difference in difficulty of earning the top score on the ACT versus SAT is that of the University of Alabama Presidential Elite scholarship, which requires a 4.0 GPA (which does not actually require all A grades, since they take whatever weighted GPA off the high school transcript to use) and a 36 ACT or 1600 SAT: https://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out-of-state.php . Someone who does equally well on the ACT and SAT may find it easier to hit the needed ACT score than the SAT score.
I don’t know about the Finnish test, but the fact is that SAT math problems are not really difficult - however, there are so many you need to be fast and very careful. One careless error will lower your score, so it makes sense that 1600 and 1580 are not that different. As noted elsewhere, AMC/AIME serve as additional high-level math reasoning test for practical purposes. However, we weren’t really aware of this until it was too late for college apps, so this is the downside.
There are many types of reasoning and intelligence skills in life.
The Finnish government just competely disbanded before the new elections. They don’t know how to figure out how to pay for their current system. Perhaps the much heralded Finnish exam should include balance sheets and common sense. Nothing more than addition and subtraction needed.
Part of the issue is what one person seems intelligent or worthy and what another person may see.
I’m pretty sure a geographic plot of the perfect test scores would show major concentrations in a relatively small number of areas. I was going to suggest a similarity to a political map, but that doesn’t sound right.
@RandyErika That “perfect score” SAT heatmap you suggest would have been very cold in my hometown my senior year. In the Stone Age. LOL.
Regarding test scores, in my limited experience it seems that kids tell others their “superscore” rather than single sitting ACT score. For example, at D’s HS, it has been rumored that several kids had a perfect 36s but looking at Naviance, I don’t see any 36 the last three years but many 35’s and 34’s. I think the perfect single sitting 36 is still very rare.
@socaldad2002 definitely more of those. However the CB and ACT stats all add up to the same pool. 34 35 36 and sat equivalent is the same 50k approx students, total. 2.3mm sat takers and anothe 1.6mm act test takers. There are 37000 highschools. That’s less than 1.5 per school in that whole cohort. And doesn’t factor in foreign results. It’s even lower when thst is factored in the equation.
It’s just a small number that seems larger in context of this forum.
And only 2,000 ‘perfect’ scores on the ACT, out of 2+ million test takers. <1%.
Now, undoubtedly, there is some over lap in that many students take both tests, and a top test taker will score well on both. But let’s assume that they are separate pools…that means < 3,000 students each year earn a perfect score. Clearly not reason to make the tests harder.