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I think two poor kids, raised on the same neighborhood/conditions, measured with each other, SAT will give you a proxy for academic ability/IQ. Two wealthy ki

I think two poor kids, raised on the same neighborhood/conditions, measured with each other, SAT will give you a proxy for academic ability/IQ. Two wealthy kids, raised on the same neighborhood/conditions, measured with each other, SAT will give you a proxy for academic ability/IQ. That comparison might break down when measuring A poor kid, with a wealthy kid. Or a ESL student (english as foreign language, to a native speaker). The wealthy kids, probably went to better schools, had taken PRE-SATS since 8th grade, has tutor, and everything in between to get better. Poor kids are probably sharing a room with their parents, live in crappy conditions, and have to start working as teens to help out the family economically... All upper middle class folks know this: the more testing practice you do, the better you become at that test... SAT and IQ tests are a valid tool of measurement when two people have had the same conditions and training. Let me translate into engineering terms: Two engineers go to interview, one is good and has some great experience, the other one is average, but just LEETCODES for months before the interview. The average engineer gets the job, while the better one might not, as he probably didn't solve some Leetcode style of problem fast enough. Im real life scenarios, the good engineer would have outperformed the average one.

mercutio2 6y ago
The notion that SAT scores are a poor proxy for IQ in low income households is a commonly held talking point, but it’s just not borne out by research. Testing prep just doesn’t matter in aggregate, because admissions rarely have a cliff between marginal score and slightly better marginal score. Upper middle class people spending money on it doesn’t mean it’s money well spent; like many things rich people spend money on, it’s largely signaling to peers. Also, your caricature of why people get hired for engineering jobs bears very little relationship to what I and my colleagues look for in engineering interviews. Being able to solve a few simple algorithm problems is table stakes. Being able to talk about what you’re doing and why is what’s being measured. People who crammed leetcode but don’t actually understand the material are obvious 5 minutes into the interview; people who freeze up occasionally on the algorithm bits but can talk about why they’re doing what they’re doing generally get hired.
- pc86 6y ago
  > Also, your caricature of why people get hired for engineering jobs bears very little relationship to what I and my colleagues look for in engineering interviews. Yeah, I'm not sure I've ever even heard of anyone comparing the times it took different applicants to answer a question, except maybe in the binary "did they do it under the time cap" sense. And even then, very rarely is software development time capped in the way an interview was so as long as someone's thinking is along the right track I don't think not getting a specific answer in a specific timeframe would disqualify them.
- ardit33 6y ago
  The notion that practicing something, doesn't make you better at it, is ridiculous. Two, equal people, walk in a test room. One has never seen the test, the other has been practicing it for a while. The guy that has been practicing, will perform better. Even for official IQ test taking, they don't recommend taking the test more than once a year, as it invalidates the results of the tests... Why? The act of doing tests, makes you better at that particular test, and the test ceases to become a good measurement of what it was trying to measure (in this case, IQ).
- dropofwill 6y ago
  I raised my score by 200-300 points in each category by spending some time with one of those study prep books with the example tests. This saved me about $8k / semester due to ‘merit’ based scholarships + honors program (my university publishes the SAT/grade cutoffs for each). Honestly I would be surprised if it was possible to create a test that was both impossible to improve with practice and actually measured anything at all.
pc86 6y ago
You provide an excellent argument for penalizing applicants who are good at Leetcode-type problems :) How far are we from trying to "correct"/normalize SAT scores according to family income quintiles? It seems to make sense if it's actually true that you can't compare scores across quintiles. As someone who did above-average and came from the bottom quintile it would have helped me a lot. As someone whose kids will very likely grow up in the top quintile I'm not sure I'd want that to happen.

mercutio2 6y ago

The notion that SAT scores are a poor proxy for IQ in low income households is a commonly held talking point, but it’s just not borne out by research. Testing prep just doesn’t matter in aggregate, because admissions rarely have a cliff between marginal score and slightly better marginal score. Upper middle class people spending money on it doesn’t mean it’s money well spent; like many things rich people spend money on, it’s largely signaling to peers. Also, your caricature of why people get hired for engineering jobs bears very little relationship to what I and my colleagues look for in engineering interviews. Being able to solve a few simple algorithm problems is table stakes. Being able to talk about what you’re doing and why is what’s being measured. People who crammed leetcode but don’t actually understand the material are obvious 5 minutes into the interview; people who freeze up occasionally on the algorithm bits but can talk about why they’re doing what they’re doing generally get hired.

pc86 6y ago
> Also, your caricature of why people get hired for engineering jobs bears very little relationship to what I and my colleagues look for in engineering interviews. Yeah, I'm not sure I've ever even heard of anyone comparing the times it took different applicants to answer a question, except maybe in the binary "did they do it under the time cap" sense. And even then, very rarely is software development time capped in the way an interview was so as long as someone's thinking is along the right track I don't think not getting a specific answer in a specific timeframe would disqualify them.
ardit33 6y ago
The notion that practicing something, doesn't make you better at it, is ridiculous. Two, equal people, walk in a test room. One has never seen the test, the other has been practicing it for a while. The guy that has been practicing, will perform better. Even for official IQ test taking, they don't recommend taking the test more than once a year, as it invalidates the results of the tests... Why? The act of doing tests, makes you better at that particular test, and the test ceases to become a good measurement of what it was trying to measure (in this case, IQ).
dropofwill 6y ago
I raised my score by 200-300 points in each category by spending some time with one of those study prep books with the example tests. This saved me about $8k / semester due to ‘merit’ based scholarships + honors program (my university publishes the SAT/grade cutoffs for each). Honestly I would be surprised if it was possible to create a test that was both impossible to improve with practice and actually measured anything at all.

pc86 6y ago

You provide an excellent argument for penalizing applicants who are good at Leetcode-type problems :) How far are we from trying to "correct"/normalize SAT scores according to family income quintiles? It seems to make sense if it's actually true that you can't compare scores across quintiles. As someone who did above-average and came from the bottom quintile it would have helped me a lot. As someone whose kids will very likely grow up in the top quintile I'm not sure I'd want that to happen.