<p>The oft-mentioned Espenshade study uses data which may not be perfectly correlated to current standards. The data is in three sets - one from 1983 and nearby years, one from 1993, one from 1997. The SAT has undergone considerable changes since that time, including the increase of the range. There has also been a considerable increase in test prep, the addition of score choice, and the introduction of superscoring. And, of course, the applicant pool has increased dramatically.
All of these factors suggest to me that attempting to correlate a score of 1500+ in this study to a score of 2300 today is , at best, on shaky ground.</p>