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How do you reconcile the large leaps in SAT scores that people achieve through preparing for the test? For example, while I had a fairly respectable score in hi
by imjk 14y ago
How do you reconcile the large leaps in SAT scores that people achieve through preparing for the test? For example, while I had a fairly respectable score in high school, after I spent a little time working as an SAT tutor in college, I was regularly scoring perfectly on all practice tests and recently release new tests. Surely my IQ hadn't jumped drastically. Just curious for your take on this.
- andylei 14y agocorrelations are aggregate data measures that are only meaningful on large datasets. a high score on the SAT for one person does not imply that that person is smart. it just means that if you had a large population of people and you wanted to predict their intelligence, you could use SAT scores and get pretty good results.
- tankbot 14y agoYou don't reconcile. Tests of any kind have this problem as intelligence is not quantifiable, only knowledge and age. The GP is merely showing that the SATs are referenced as IQ tests. Since the same argument applies to IQ tests, even in this respect they are similar.
- aggie 14y agoYour IQ could see a similar jump if you spent a lot of time practicing for and taking IQ tests. IQ is a psychometric measure of a construct, intelligence, so when you increase your IQ by getting better at taking the test, you are not actually increasing intelligence, just influencing the measure of it.
- yummyfajitas 14y agoAccording to studies not performed by a company selling test prep, there is no large leap in SAT score. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124278685697537839.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124278685697537839.html
- Evbn 14y agoYet practicing old tests clearly does increase scores, and token adult's comment above did not account for that. He assumed that everyone practices and so the measurements are unbiased, or that practice is highly correlated with IQ (which may be true)
- seanlinehan 14y agoWhat I find interesting is that I achieved a massive leap in my SAT scores without studying. As a disclaimer, I grew up in a lower-income area with terrible college prep and neither of my parents knew the college admission process. In short, I didn't actually know that you could study for the SAT. So the first time I took it, I did so completely blind and got an 1800. I took the test, again without studying, two months later and got a 2100. Given that both times I took the exam I was neither stressed out, tired, or even the slightest bit prepared, I'm not sure how to reconcile the 300 point leap.