<p>This question is not sarcastic – Once SAT scores are submitted for one criterium for undergraduate college admission and scholarships, are SATs ever considered/used again? Perhaps placement in a freshman course? I would think previous course work be more pertinent.</p>
<p>I keep hearing Springsteen’s “Glory Days” in my head.</p>
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<p>I don’t usually quote my own posts, but heavens to Betsy I’ve made a grevious error. The thread title puts the demarcation as > 1550/1600 (as opposed to >= 1550). So even a 1550 is destined for failure. If I made a mistake like that on the Math SAT I’d likely doom my future prospects forever.</p>
<p>No, there isn’t.</p>
<p>Being intelligent means you’re intelligent . . . not necessarily happy. Or a good person. Or a good influence on the people around you. Brilliant people can be miserable and unfulfilled too. Some are poor. Some get addicted to alcohol or dope. Some are cruel. </p>
<p>Intelligence is only one facet of a person. A person is so much more than a score you get for filling out bubbles.</p>
<p>Also, I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Dr. Amy Bishop yet.</p>
<p>PizzaGirl:
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<p>The definition of success in this context limits to
<p>thumper1:
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<p>Intellectual curiosity, it came to my mind so wanted to ask others. I like differing opinions as it give me more material to think and help me reach conclusions I might not be able to reach if just think on my own.</p>
<p>stillnadine:
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<p>Not true; a failure at one test won’t indicate failure but a success is a success.</p>
<p>You can do bad on a test but you won’t happen to just do great on a test. You might be as good as anyone who score 1550/1600 but may not score that high because of a bad day.
But you won’t be able to just score 1550/1600 without being good or by putting a lot of effort.</p>
<p>bovertine:
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<p>1550 is not a hard line but put there just to indicate the group of students that fall in > 75 percentile at any school. As far as I know that a score of 780 for M and 770 R will put you at > 75 percentile even at HMSPY. SAT1 Writing is not considered because most parent or older students on CC won’t have taken the SAT1 writing section so there might not be many data points.</p>
<p>PizzaGirl:
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<p>I’m not trying to overstate it. The reasoning behind this is simple:</p>
<p>Life is full of taking decisions. With better mathematical and critical reasoning abilities a person will be in a better position to make proper decisions.</p>
<p>Since SAT1 is the most broad based test taken by US population, it can be used to predict to a very high degree of accuracy one’s ability to reason. </p>
<p>Since with any study it is important to first concentrate on a small group, hence the emphasis on the group of students scoring > 1550/1600. It is easy to separate these out too and most of them will be found at State flag ships or top universities.</p>
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<p>Oh - that’s because you are apparently under the impression that everyone who goes to HYPSM will have tremendous success in life and that people who go to state flagships or “lower” universities have to climb mountains to achieve that same level of success.</p>
<p>Do you actually know any adults who are HYPSM graduates? Really, they’re just … people. Some are lazier and some are harder working. Some are grinds and some are inspired. Some are ambitious and some are less so. The majority of HYPSM graduates aren’t “setting the world on fire.” They go find jobs, they do their jobs to their best of their abilities, and they live quiet, unexciting, perfectly fine lives. I think you think that HYPSM graduates are all trailing piles of gold behind them and earning awards right and left as they flit between discovering cures for cancer and saving lives. That’s not how it works in the US. There is FAR less stratification here than what you’re used to.</p>
<p>At the top of virtually any field in the US, if you grab the movers and shakers, you will find people from top schools – and state schools – and directional state universities. Because it’s what they did with what they had that counts. Stop thinking of the HYPSM degree as a magic rollercoaster that takes one to the top. With the exception of only a handful of fields such as i-banking, it stops being important the moment you get your first job. Then your performance in that job counts.</p>
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<p>My impression is that high SAT scores lead to, generally, more success in the first two areas, but not in the last area. Financial success seems to relate more to the particular field of study, rather than to academic accomplishments (correlated with high SAT scores).</p>
<p>Unfortunately, looks often seem to be a better predictor of monetary success than SAT scores.</p>
<p>I was flipping channels the other day and saw a show featuring one of the old girls from that show where they used to live in the Playboy mansion. She was complaining to her husband about how she could never find a job (if she wanted to find one, which she doesn’t…but just in case…) because she doesn’t have a degree (and she appears to be dumb as a rock, but I digress). So the husband, who is a famous athlete making a gazillion dollars and clearly did not marry her for her SAT scores, insists that she has a million jobs out there waiting for her if she wants one. I’m sure he is right. She will never have to worry.</p>
<p>This is a difficult question to answer, really, because who actually knows anyone’s SAT score? Do people compare scores at cocktail parties? I think not. It’s never occurred to me to discuss something so silly with other adults. Quite frankly, anyone who would is a real dolt.</p>
<p>To your argument that SAT scores are predictive of success:
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<p>Look outside your world for a moment. I’d like to introduce you to some of my neighbors. They are clearly very financially successful by any stretch of the imagination, and have happy, productive lives, give back to the community, have families and children who love them, etc.</p>
<p>One of them owns a chain of car dealerships. One of them owns a local chain of restaurants. They both give back to the community and have been honored for that.
What got them to be successful wasn’t their abilities to quickly calculate the area under the hypotenuse or to discern what this paragraph about the Crimean War was really saying or their knowledge of how to use commas or to figure out what happens in Omaha when a train leaving Cincinnati at 100 mph meets the train leaving Los Angeles at 120 mph. </p>
<p>Instead, they because successful through tons of hard work, tons of elbow grease, and tons of decision-making that had NOTHING to do with academics. Should they open the restaurant on this side of the road or that? What are the things they could offer that delight their customers? How do they hire, manage and motivate a work force that implements that vision, down to the fry cook or the receptionist in the service area? How can they market and develop their brands to the community? How should they manage their finances and banking to give them enough cash to invest in improvements? What suppliers should they pick for the many, many things they’ll need suppliers for? What are the relationships with community leaders that they will want to cultivate and manage?</p>
<p>THESE are the things that lead to them being successful. What this has to do with the content of the SAT’s, whether they know what an isosceles triangle is, or whether they can figure out what some obscure vocabulary word means in context – is precisely nothing.</p>
<p>You seem to have a very engineer-view of the world. Life is a series of academic problems - solve them quickly and/or better and you’ll be successful. But that’s only true in certain professions. These people that I’m describing don’t NEED to have 1600-SAT levels to be wildly successful. If they want smart people, they’ll HIRE those smart people. They’ll hire the engineering firm to build the restaurant or the car dealership – but they themselves don’t need to know how to do any of that stuff. So meanwhile, who’s more successful? The engineer who dutifully calculates the measurements needed to build the building (look! he got an 800 on his Math SAT, isn’t he smart?) – or the guy who makes it possible by commissioning the building in the first place?</p>
<p><<is there=“” a=“” co-relation=“” between=“” high=“” sat1(m+cr)=“”> 1550/1600 and success in life?>></is></p>
<p>Not from my experience.</p>
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Yes, when I’m at work, generally my decisions involving solving the exact problem type I have reviewed for years. I generally have four alternatives, A,B,C, or D, and I will bubble in a box. The answer is always one of those four,and the information I need is always contained in a pamphlet. But I don’t worry, because I have prep classes and books to read. And these decisions always have straghtforward numerical answers, or are based on reading a passage. And of course, in my real life, there is always one correct answer. I need no people skills, no intuition, no creativity. And even for decisions with huge financial implications I don’t need to be a risk taker - the only thing I risk is a quarter point.</p>
<p>And I am an engineer by the way.</p>
<p>PizzaGirl is right. If we are talking financial success then risktaking, hard work and luck are far more valuable than high school test scores. A little street savvy helps as well. EVerything being equal, would high scorers do better financially? Maybe, but I’m sure there are far more preditive variables in the regression.</p>
<p>Is there a silliest thread contest this week?</p>
<p>SATs are definitely a measure of test taking ability, probably correlated with success in college and possibly intelligence.</p>
<p>Success in any profession, including engineering, is more dependent on leadership and communication skills than technical ability or intelligence. There have already been several surveys and studies that show this. Many smart engineers work longer hours, get less credit, and make less money than their no doubt lower SAT bosses.</p>
<p>So how do you define success in a profession?</p>
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I see so many SAT-cophants on this site, but generally more on the kids side.</p>
<p>This is not a study, this is a post on a message board. And I am unaware of any study on this, probably because no researcher thinks it’s worth studying.</p>
<p>But assuming somebody did, IMO it is very difficult to apply sufficient controls for a study like this.</p>
<p>You have to define what is success in life?
Is it monetary?
Is it fame?
Is it other things?</p>
<p>I’ve seen POIH posting these views on other threads, but apparently that is not enough - he needs to start the threads to keep it going.</p>
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<p>How would better mathematical abilities particularly help the restauranteur and car-dealership-owner that I’m referring to? (Hint: They pay accountants to deal with the numbers.)</p>
<p>The ability to have a vision and the ability to marshal resources towards achieving that vision has very little to do with SAT’s or similar standardized tests. Not to mention all the soft people-skills. How does performance on the SAT correlate to the ability to find, train, motivate, retain and reward the top salespeople? Or the ability to turn an angry client into a satisfied customer who tells all her friends to shop with you?</p>