There are certain employers who do prefer the former vs the latter type of individual for new hires and have made it quite plain.
Rightly or wrongfully, they are of the opinion if someone needs to have a new problem taught to them first rather than them figuring out and solving it him/herself, that individual “isn’t smart enough” to work for them.
From my observations, it seemed the high HS GPA/low standardized test scorers at my undergrad had a much harder time adjusting to the rigors/pacing of college-level work than classmates who were low HS GPA/high standardized test scorers.
Practically everyone I knew who struggled and/or placed on academic suspension that I got to know well through tutoring and/or friendships in undergrad and a few years after college were those who had high HS GPAs/low standardized test scores. All of them attended HSs where grades came easily to them and were thrown for a loop when they arrived on campus. One of the extreme cases graduated in the top 10-15% of his boarding school graduating class and was admitted to a couple of Ivies as a legacy.
When I got to know him better through tutoring and from taking several classes together, it was pretty clear there’s no way he’d survive the rigor/pacing of my STEM-centered public magnet and he admitted as much after visiting it with me on an alum visitation day right a few weeks before Christmas break.
Disclosure: I’m one of those low HS GPA/high standardized scorers who found the academic pacing/rigor of undergrad and to some extent grad school at an elite U to be much easier than HS and respective transcripts reflected that.
I think all we have here is anecdata. I was a high GPA/low test score person who found high school easy and the rigors of college fantastic. I had no problem throwing in and doing well in college–so I don’t think we can make unilateral statements about which set of factors is the best predictor for college success. And different colleges have different ideas and that’s reflected in their admissions policies. (and my school, predictably, places more weight on hs GPA and course rigor than test scores, which was great for me)
And yes to everything @calmom said. I think it’s dangerous to equate test scores with IQ or ability, because that is NOT what the SATs are designed to measure. Some people just don’t gel with standardized tests. Because, ya know, human beings–and human intelligence–are complex and varied.
They are called “standardized” tests for a reason.
I know that within the realm of IQ testing-- where tests are rigorously validated – that the more widely used, generalized test don’t do a good job of measuring at the extremes - that is, they are not very accurate for people who score on the very low or very high end. For those individuals, a testing psychologist will supplement with more testing geared to to the profile of the individual subject.
SAT/ACT tests are validated with the expectation of producing a nice bell curve with a huge hump of median-level scorers. They don’t want the test to be too easy and they don’t want it to be too hard.
I also think there is a financial incentive for the testing industry to preserve the economic/cultural skew. If someone came along and designed a test where poor inner city kid outperformed their suburban, prep-school counterparts… well, that test wouldn’t be much use to the colleges. Bottom line, the elite colleges that purport to be need-blind and promise to meet the “full need” of applicants also benefit from using a testing instrument that serves as a decent proxy for income level.
The big problem with SAT/ACT is that the test-prep industry has invalidated whatever potential the test could have for testing native abilities. No IQ test would be considered valid for a subject who had studied the test and retook the same test several times in a year.
A lot is just personality. S1 took the ACT and was perfectly happy with his 26. He is a little slower at standardized tests and did not finish many of the sections. D took it and was upset with her 33, dragged down by her 31 W score. By most other accounts they are intellectually equal.
D did feel better once I explained that a 33 was like getting a 99, not a 92. S1 took two practice tests, D took none, so they were relatively honest results.
DD is another of the high GPA/not great test scores kid. She worked her tail off in HS and graduated as Val with almost a 4.0 unweighted GPA in all honors/AP classes. She was very involved with theatre, music and volunteering and had to use her time wisely to get things done - especially because she is a very slow reader.
Freshman year at an Ivy brought a lot more reading than she was used to. She developed some new medical issues which led to diagnoses of convergent insufficiency and light sensitivity. Basically, her eyes don’t focus together correctly leading to the words moving around on the page and she gets migraines from that and from the florescent lights and power point presentations in classes. The slow reading now makes lots of sense - it takes her much longer to be able to focus and concentrate enough to comprehend what she’s reading.
Standardized tests have so much reading in such a short period of time and her eyes and brain get too tired and need a break. It explains somewhat why she always had problems with the reading sections of tests. It’s an undiagnosed vision issue that we’d never even heard of until six months ago. She’s now got special glasses which are helping to some extent but has scheduled her classes with breaks in between so she can rest her eyes from the light for a while. And we will be talking about whether she wants to try some vision therapy to see if it can help. She’ll probably have to take the GRE at some point but maybe she’ll get into a +1 program and be able to skip it!
Oh, c’mon. It’s just a test, I don’t put so much stock into the real skills of those who design it. Anyone who rests a final opinion on intelligence based on the SAT (and/or assumes something about high gpa kids being plodders) is missing one heck of a bigger picture. These kids are what?, generally 15-17.
Unfortunate that you formed opinions on high gpa kids, based on those you met, cobrat. Many are quite bright and able to succeed.
Unfortunately, it seems that some employers of college graduates use SAT scores to make screening or hiring decisions, a use it was never intended for by its makers. Perhaps that adds to the pressure on high school students with respect to the SAT, if they happen to know that they will be judged by their SAT scores even after college graduation.
By the same token…the same could be said about low HS GPA/high SAT kids as well contrary to some posters on this and other threads who judged such students as “smart but lazy”, “test taking drones”, or “good at taking tests but academically flaky.”
Just felt the need to fire a shot across to counter the more numerous potshots by some posters against low HS GPA/high standardized test kids.
My personal opinion is that SATs are only valid as one point to judge one’s likelihood to do well in college combined with other factors.
I completely disagree with their use for post-college employment as after 3-4+ years of college…that score’s no longer relevant. Unfortunately, many prestigious employers…such as ibankers or business organizational consulting firms do ask for SATs or other standardized test scores.
If they insist on scores…they should be ones taken close to one’s graduation for grad school like the GRE, GMAT, LSAT, etc. Though most of those firms do ask for those scores if available…many still insist on asking for one’s SATs…
What employers ask for 5 year old SAT scores? Is this a new thing? I’ve never heard of it and I’ve worked in some very large companies. I have heard of some companies asking for college GPAs.
Several business organizational consulting firms like BCG ask for SAT scores along with additional standardized scores if one had them(Mainly grad school standardized exams like GRE, GMAT, LSAT, etc). Some Ibanking and finance firms also ask for such scores according to several friends who applied and got hired.
And it’s not a new trend as those requests existed on application forms from such firms when I was in undergrad during the mid-late '90s.
I’ve worked for several large financial firms and haven’t heard of this or seen this. If Human Resources is asking for them, its my experience that those doing the interviewing and hiring don’t give a rat’s patootie about old SAT/ACT scores. I never saw it in the 80s when I was interviewing out of undergrad, nor in the 90s out of business school (including with a few consulting firms) , nor in many decades since of being involved in hiring for the departments I’ve worked in.
SAT test taking skills are somewhat different than the ones required to get good grades in high school courses. Most high school tests are not nearly as long as the SATs. It’s tough to maintain perfect concentration for that long, especially when time-pressured every minute. The college board denies that the SAT is time-limited, but if you look at the data on questions incorrectly answered or omitted both of these go up quite steeply after the first half or so of the test. I think students who don’t read quickly or tend to get flustered under pressure are not going to score too well for their ability.
Low SAT’s, low GPA, even low IQ score - there can be any number of reasons for any of these for someone who otherwise seems capable of the skills or abilities supposedly being measured.
If employers are asking for SAT scores, why don’t college students retake them over winter break of their senior year? The College Board will take their money.
All of these tests correlate strongly with IQ tests. Until 1994 the SAT was essentially an IQ test, and SAT scores prior to 1994 are accepted by Mensa, the high-IQ society, as an IQ test.
In 1995 a bunch of changes were made to make the test a better reflection of achievement, and as a result it correlates less closely to IQ test scores. But the correlation is still very strong. Prior to the 1995 test changes the correlation with IQ tests was .86; today it is somewhere between .72 and .82, either of which is an incredibly strong correlation.
There is more to life than IQ, but it’s better to have a high IQ than a mediocre one. But an IQ test doesn’t measure social intelligence/ability or willingness to delay gratification/work hard. These skills together can be worth 20-35 IQ points in terms of one’s ability to navigate life.
My wife attended a seminar where a study was cited that of the factors that contribute to student success, the highest correlation was the ACT score of the teacher. It was more important in predicting student performance than the teacher’s grade-point, experience, and class size. I tried to Google the study and couldn’t find it, but I’m pretty sure it’s out there somewhere.
