4 ms·

> The SATs, particularly the mathematics score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically. Is there any way to prove/disp

> The SATs, particularly the mathematics score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically. Is there any way to prove/disprove this? Also doesn’t this also beg the question as to why non-Asian parents apparently won’t teach their kids to be good academics?

someguydave 4y ago
Yes there is a way, you put kids in test prep and see if they do better. They generally do not improve much. The SAT is an IQ test, and IQ is mostly inherited from your parents.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  > The SAT is an IQ test In that case I weep for the future, because I’ve met plenty of dumbass people who managed to get a high enough SAT score to get in school.
  - hirvi74 4y ago
    I also weep for people that extrapolate too much meaning from an IQ test. (I'm not talking about you).
- netheril96 4y ago
  So you are saying that Asians have higher intelligence, and not just a little bit higher, but significantly higher than other race?
  - someguydave 4y ago
    of the ones present in Michigan, yes.
  - throwaway8582 4y ago
    The Asians present in North America are not a random sample. A large portion of them came here specifically to work in STEM or other fields requiring high levels of intelligence and education. It's very probable that the ones here are, on average, significantly more intelligent than both the average American and the average Asian in Asia.
    - faeriechangling 4y ago
      For that matter, the Asians you see in studies of the average test scores in somewhere like “China” aren’t representative of the educational ability of the average rice paddy farmer, but of more urbanized populations. I feel this must at least be a factor.
  - PubliusMI 4y ago
    Is this supposed to be a "Gotcha"?
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  There is no way the SAT is a purely IQ test, when i didn't get a hot score on my first SAT, i practiced for 1 week straight and substantially improved my scores (like 300 points range). The way i liken this to is if a MLB pitcher throws the same pitch at the same velocity and i know this ahead of time, i could practice for a year and when the time comes i could hit that ball. Does that mean i'm a major league level batter? Heck no, it is the same way with the SAT's, Leetcode and other tests, they measure how much you want it more than raw IQ.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- BeetleB 4y ago
  Using that logic, everything is an IQ test :-)
- Retric 4y ago
  Extensive test prep can do a significant amount to increase SAT scores, but the test is designed to minimize it. People do see over 100 point increase ~20 hours of prep, and extensive as in 3+months can push that to 200 though with diminishing returns at the top of the curve. Which shouldn’t be surprising as increasing speed, even just from not needing to read instruction, provides an advantage for most people.
- nova22033 4y ago
  Yes there is a way, you put kids in test prep and see if they do better. For this to be a real test, you'll need parents of twins willing to send only one kid to test prep..and not send the other one..you know..for science. Doubt there is a parent who would do that.
  - filoleg 4y ago
    > For this to be a real test, you'll need parents of twins willing to send only one kid to test prep..and not send the other one What's the issue with testing someone without prep, then giving them a week to study up, and then testing them again? People take SAT multiple times, you know, and it is a brand new set of questions every time. I did that myself (took it 3 times total), and I can say this: taking it without prep and then taking it later with just a week of studying on my own for about an hour per day made a massive difference. Even before I got my results back on the second try, I already felt i did much better, as I was second guessing much less and felt more confident about my answers. And the final scores reflected that really well. However, studying beyond that (which I did for my third attempt, months later) didn't help much and just marginally changed my scores by +-20 in different categories (out of 700 total max in each of the three categories, which is how it was scored at the time). I didnt feel any more prepared either. Judging by my acquaintances, it was a similar pattern. Massive boost in scores on the second try, marginal or non-existent in scores on attempts beyond the 2nd.
- f154hfds 4y ago
  I don't think the SAT is an IQ test. I'm sure IQ helps but parents clearly have a pivotal role - the single biggest external factor to explain variation in score perhaps. Surely the biggest factor in SAT scores is how much you the student _care_ about the SAT score. Why do you care? Maybe because your parents care, maybe because your parents don't care? At the end of the day parents are crucial to the success of their children positively and negatively.
  - someguydave 4y ago
    This paper found a 0.82 correlation between general mental ability g and SAT scores https://archive.org/details/ScholasticAssessmentOrG/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/ScholasticAssessmentOrG/page/n1/...
    - Retric 4y ago
      That’s relatively low considering what kind of test it is. Elementary school sees a 0.7 correlation between IQ and academic performance.
      - yCombLinks 4y ago
        .82 is an insanely high correlation in any kind of social science
        Retric 4y ago
        A benchmark of everything across all of social sciences is extremely broad when comparing two different tests of mental performance designed to correlate with other tests of mental performance. It’s like being shocked that resting heart rate and VO2 Max happen to correlate quite well relative to other health indicators. Yes they are testing different things, but not that different.
BeetleB 4y ago
> Also doesn’t this also beg the question as to why non-Asian parents apparently won’t teach their kids to be good academics? Because they don't value their kids being good at academics. I've lived in multiple countries. In the non-US ones, people don't brag about being bad at math (even when they are bad at it). As an adult, if you couldn't add/subtract/multiply two large numbers on paper without a calculator, that would not reflect well on you.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Because they don't value their kids being good at academics. Yes, my memory of high school is that everyone including the adults celebrated sports, and hardly anyone gave a crap about the high academic achievers, who were often social outcasts. I spent a lot of my childhood trying (though largely failing) to pretend that I was not so smart. I can't speak for other countries, but anti-intellectualism is widespread in the US.
  - lukas099 4y ago
    Not my experience at all (Midwestern small city, ~90% white). Parents with Honor Student bumper stickers, subtle humble-brags, and general celebration of academic ability were all around me.
- raydev 4y ago
  I have a (completely unresearched, unfounded, probably not accurate) theory that the exceptional prosperity in US that the boomer/early-gen-x generations saw, which had ultra-cheap housing relative to income across the US, ultra-cheap everything in the US, industries expanding so fast that schooling became less important in the US, all of that was a fluke. For a couple decades a majority of people in the US had effectively gotten coupons for half-off everything they desired. It wasn't normal, but it made those generations in the US so mentally lazy that it effectively poisoned huge swaths of the following generations, fooling them into thinking it was always going to be that easy. So now we're trying to sort out exactly why those born and raised in the US are doing so poorly now.
  - 4y ago

someguydave 4y ago

Yes there is a way, you put kids in test prep and see if they do better. They generally do not improve much. The SAT is an IQ test, and IQ is mostly inherited from your parents.

the_only_law 4y ago
> The SAT is an IQ test In that case I weep for the future, because I’ve met plenty of dumbass people who managed to get a high enough SAT score to get in school.
- hirvi74 4y ago
  I also weep for people that extrapolate too much meaning from an IQ test. (I'm not talking about you).
netheril96 4y ago
So you are saying that Asians have higher intelligence, and not just a little bit higher, but significantly higher than other race?
- someguydave 4y ago
  of the ones present in Michigan, yes.
- throwaway8582 4y ago
  The Asians present in North America are not a random sample. A large portion of them came here specifically to work in STEM or other fields requiring high levels of intelligence and education. It's very probable that the ones here are, on average, significantly more intelligent than both the average American and the average Asian in Asia.
  - faeriechangling 4y ago
    For that matter, the Asians you see in studies of the average test scores in somewhere like “China” aren’t representative of the educational ability of the average rice paddy farmer, but of more urbanized populations. I feel this must at least be a factor.
- PubliusMI 4y ago
  Is this supposed to be a "Gotcha"?
strikelaserclaw 4y ago
There is no way the SAT is a purely IQ test, when i didn't get a hot score on my first SAT, i practiced for 1 week straight and substantially improved my scores (like 300 points range). The way i liken this to is if a MLB pitcher throws the same pitch at the same velocity and i know this ahead of time, i could practice for a year and when the time comes i could hit that ball. Does that mean i'm a major league level batter? Heck no, it is the same way with the SAT's, Leetcode and other tests, they measure how much you want it more than raw IQ.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
BeetleB 4y ago
Using that logic, everything is an IQ test :-)
Retric 4y ago
Extensive test prep can do a significant amount to increase SAT scores, but the test is designed to minimize it. People do see over 100 point increase ~20 hours of prep, and extensive as in 3+months can push that to 200 though with diminishing returns at the top of the curve. Which shouldn’t be surprising as increasing speed, even just from not needing to read instruction, provides an advantage for most people.
nova22033 4y ago
Yes there is a way, you put kids in test prep and see if they do better. For this to be a real test, you'll need parents of twins willing to send only one kid to test prep..and not send the other one..you know..for science. Doubt there is a parent who would do that.
- filoleg 4y ago
  > For this to be a real test, you'll need parents of twins willing to send only one kid to test prep..and not send the other one What's the issue with testing someone without prep, then giving them a week to study up, and then testing them again? People take SAT multiple times, you know, and it is a brand new set of questions every time. I did that myself (took it 3 times total), and I can say this: taking it without prep and then taking it later with just a week of studying on my own for about an hour per day made a massive difference. Even before I got my results back on the second try, I already felt i did much better, as I was second guessing much less and felt more confident about my answers. And the final scores reflected that really well. However, studying beyond that (which I did for my third attempt, months later) didn't help much and just marginally changed my scores by +-20 in different categories (out of 700 total max in each of the three categories, which is how it was scored at the time). I didnt feel any more prepared either. Judging by my acquaintances, it was a similar pattern. Massive boost in scores on the second try, marginal or non-existent in scores on attempts beyond the 2nd.
f154hfds 4y ago
I don't think the SAT is an IQ test. I'm sure IQ helps but parents clearly have a pivotal role - the single biggest external factor to explain variation in score perhaps. Surely the biggest factor in SAT scores is how much you the student _care_ about the SAT score. Why do you care? Maybe because your parents care, maybe because your parents don't care? At the end of the day parents are crucial to the success of their children positively and negatively.
- someguydave 4y ago
  This paper found a 0.82 correlation between general mental ability g and SAT scores https://archive.org/details/ScholasticAssessmentOrG/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/ScholasticAssessmentOrG/page/n1/...
  - Retric 4y ago
    That’s relatively low considering what kind of test it is. Elementary school sees a 0.7 correlation between IQ and academic performance.
    - yCombLinks 4y ago
      .82 is an insanely high correlation in any kind of social science
      - Retric 4y ago
        A benchmark of everything across all of social sciences is extremely broad when comparing two different tests of mental performance designed to correlate with other tests of mental performance. It’s like being shocked that resting heart rate and VO2 Max happen to correlate quite well relative to other health indicators. Yes they are testing different things, but not that different.

BeetleB 4y ago

> Also doesn’t this also beg the question as to why non-Asian parents apparently won’t teach their kids to be good academics? Because they don't value their kids being good at academics. I've lived in multiple countries. In the non-US ones, people don't brag about being bad at math (even when they are bad at it). As an adult, if you couldn't add/subtract/multiply two large numbers on paper without a calculator, that would not reflect well on you.

lapcat 4y ago
> Because they don't value their kids being good at academics. Yes, my memory of high school is that everyone including the adults celebrated sports, and hardly anyone gave a crap about the high academic achievers, who were often social outcasts. I spent a lot of my childhood trying (though largely failing) to pretend that I was not so smart. I can't speak for other countries, but anti-intellectualism is widespread in the US.
- lukas099 4y ago
  Not my experience at all (Midwestern small city, ~90% white). Parents with Honor Student bumper stickers, subtle humble-brags, and general celebration of academic ability were all around me.
raydev 4y ago
I have a (completely unresearched, unfounded, probably not accurate) theory that the exceptional prosperity in US that the boomer/early-gen-x generations saw, which had ultra-cheap housing relative to income across the US, ultra-cheap everything in the US, industries expanding so fast that schooling became less important in the US, all of that was a fluke. For a couple decades a majority of people in the US had effectively gotten coupons for half-off everything they desired. It wasn't normal, but it made those generations in the US so mentally lazy that it effectively poisoned huge swaths of the following generations, fooling them into thinking it was always going to be that easy. So now we're trying to sort out exactly why those born and raised in the US are doing so poorly now.
- 4y ago