The SAT II score and it's national percentile which one is better reference factor?

xrCalico23
Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:50:37 +0000

silverturtle, I’m really surprised that you have heard that from the admission officers. Shouldn’t the scaled score be more important? Among the different subject tests, the percentile to scaled score comparison varies mostly because of the difference in the overall ability of the entire pool of test takers. One’s percentile may be lower because he is competing against a student body that is relatively stronger in the subject as a whole, but that does not make his or her own high test score less significant.

Consider the math I and and the math II exams, for instance. A perfect score on the math I would yield a much higher percentile than the exact same score on the math II exam, yet a high score on math II, though translating to a lower percentile, is generally thought to be more preferable.

The same applies to the far eastern language subject tests that mifune had previously mentioned, as well as, let’s say as an example, the physics subject test. A large number of high school students never takes physics, or at least never completes the course in time for the subject test, so the people who do choose the physics exam are comparably stronger in math and science, resulting in lower percentile ranges. But does the lower percentile necessarily renders a high score on the physics subjects less impressive/significant than the exact same score on U.S. history?

anyway, just my opinions. maybe mifune already said something like that in his posts above, but I’m kind of too lazy to read through it all :P