As an ex-SAT tutor (horrid job, but while in school it seemed like a good idea...), my take on the matter: high SAT scores don't mean a damn thing, I've seen ab

As an ex-SAT tutor (horrid job, but while in school it seemed like a good idea...), my take on the matter: high SAT scores don't mean a damn thing, I've seen absolute fools hit high 700s across the board, but low scores can be telling, especially in math (verbal is a lot more variable, from what I've seen, and also easier to game through prep; math is harder to "fake"). Someone going into a technical field should be able to do well on the math section, and I would not want to work (programming, at least) with someone that could only manage a 450. I've never met a person that couldn't get at least five or six hundred points on the math section that I would consider even remotely qualified to go into a science, math, or programming. Frankly, the best people should (and usually do) do even better, at least on math. The material is just too close to what you've spend years doing in school to use the "bad at tests" excuse - if you have any aptitude for quantitative reasoning at all, you will not do poorly. Most of the smartest people I know (granted, mostly acquaintances from physics, so it's a biased sample) hit 800 with ease. So overall, I can see some use for the SAT as far as trimming bottom of the barrel candidates. But the difference between a 650 and a 700, or even a 750 and an 800? Meh...that's maybe three or four questions. A person's score varies by that much between different tests, so it's utterly irrelevant as a fine discriminating factor. The difficulty level of the test is _far_ too low anyhow to discern a good candidate from a great one.