" since the SAT doesn't correlate with academic performance at all beyond a slight correlation with GPA " Did you know that weight doesn't correlate very well

" since the SAT doesn't correlate with academic performance at all beyond a slight correlation with GPA " Did you know that weight doesn't correlate very well with linebacker performance in the NFL? It could be that a 350-pounder is just as effective as a 150-pounder, and there's some pro-fat discrimination -- or it could be that you're talking about correlation within a school, which chooses people on the basis of multiple criteria including SATs, such that their students are about equal academically. Consider: a school could look at two people, one of whom gets a perfect math SAT and a 500 verbal, and another of whom gets 600 on each and writes a killer admissions essay. The former student gets a 3.5 focusing on math and CS. The latter gets a 3.5 taking English and Philosophy. This is the kind of evidence schools find; that people play to their strengths, so as long as they're of similar average talent, they'll have similar success, even if an individual measure of that talent doesn't correlate with their relative success among people who by the average of many measures, are very similar. This has been a well-known problem with the studies you cite for over a decade.