I was telling a therapist
other day about someone’s score on SAT. “Oh,” he said, waving his hand in dismissal, “THAT thing. It doesn’t measure a THING.” Let’s set record state. What he meant was – (1) It doesn’t measure anything he cared about, or (2) It doesn’t measure anything that need slow person down. But it definitely measures SOMETHING, and if you’re HR person reviewing test scores, or coach reviewing assessments, or taker looking at your own results, or college admission officer, it’s important to know what a test or assessment DOES measure.
The SAT – Scholastic Aptitude Test – measures aptitude for college work and SAT scores have been shown to correlate with success as a college freshman (only). It consists of tests in Verbal Ability and Mathematical Reasoning.
To refresh your memory, go here http://www.the-big-test.com ests/index.htm - and take some of sample tests. What’s your first reaction? For me, Sentence Completions are fun. Then I came to Critical Reading Questions and suddenly felt a need to make a sandwich. Then came “if one train leaves station at 4 p.m. heading east at 5 mph…” and preparing a 6-course meal seemed more imperative.
I think it measures your ability to withstand torture. The test lasts 3 hours and requires incredible concentration. 3 hours, after all, is an eternity to a high school student. It may measure more in testing, than in knowledge, if you know what I mean. You have to sit down and read carefully something that’s irrelevant, just because it’s required. And many college students feel that way about freshman year in college!
It’s also an endurance test. It gets harder as you go along, because your brain gets more tired.
BRIEF HISTORY
The SAT has been called “the 50-year-old system that determines course of Americans’ lives.” This sort of college admission testing began in 1901, but it didn’t really kick in until U. Cal. System adopted it in 1960.
Is it biased? It’s been dubbed “Survey of Affluent Teenagers,” and debate rages, but you might be interested to know that a homeless teenager in California, who had been completely home-schooled, just scored a perfect 800/800 on SAT: ( http://www.thekcrachannel.com/news/574672/detail.html )
It’s believed to have gotten easier over years; however nation’s high school class of 2003 achieved highest score on math section since 1967.
ABOUT THE ARTS …
According to The College Entrance Examination Board, “students of arts continue to outperform their non-arts peers on SAT.” [Source: http://www.menc.org/information/advocate/sat.html ]. In 2002, “SAT takers with coursework/experience in music performance scored 57 points higher on verbal and 41 points higher on math than students without.” This is one reason arts are encouraged in The EQ Foundation Course©.
Does it relate to anything else in life? Not unless you think focus, perseverance, and being willing (and able) to do something mental that’s hard and unpleasant in order to earn a delayed reward do.
So optimal word there is “aptitude.” “Aptitude” according to m-w.com means inclination, tendency; a natural ability; a capacity for learning; or a general suitability. In this case, one’s general suitability for college, and that it has been statistically proven to do.
IQ
Now what does it mean if someone has “a high IQ”? It stands for Intelligence Quotient and means they did well on an Intelligence Test. The IQ test was invented in 1905, by a French psychologist, Alfred Binet. As you know, for a test to have any “validity” (to mean something beyond speculation) it needs to have been tested on a lot of people (a large “sample”), and IQ test really got a rush during World War I when Robert Yerkes, a Harvard professor, realizing a captive audience when he saw one, got permission from US army to IQ test nearly 2,000,000 recruits.
Most of abilities measured by an IQ test tend to level off around age 16. (Some say they’re fixed at birth.) The test measures such things as factual knowledge, short-term memory, abstract reasoning and visual-spatial abilities.
“Intelligence is always measured relative to a particular culture,” says PsychologicalTesting.com. “’Culture-free’ tests of intelligence do not exist.” A few examples: ·Having bodily-kinesthetic intelligence to be able to throw a boomerang accurately is of no practical value if you live in Germany in 2004. ·Having what it takes to land a plane is of no consequence unless you should happen to become a pilot.
·Being able to predict where oil might be is essential if you’re a geologist in oil industry, but not if you’re a chef. What do they predict? Academic success, school grades, and, according to one source, about 6% of job success. IQ also correlates with some “social outcomes”, according to Linda S. Gottfredson, author of “The General Intelligence Factor.” For a graph, go here: http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfredbox2.html . To read a summary, go here: http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html .
Is this “intelligence”? It’s a form of intelligence, but we have hundreds of different mental “abilities,” and an IQ test measures only a few.
Your “score” is based on an average. An IQ of 100 is higher than 50% of people taking test. An IQ of 130 is higher than 95% of people taking test.
The Wechsler IQ tests are generally considered to be best available measure and are preferred by Social Security Administration. http://www.wvu.edu/~law/clinic/docs/margiqss.pdf . Incidentally, someone is considered “presumptively disabled on basis of mental impairments,” if their IQ is 59 or less, and an individual with an IQ of 70 “has a 50-50 chance of mastering elementary school curriculum, and will have a hard time functioning independently without considerable social support.” (Source: The General Intelligence Factor,” Linda S. Gottfredson).
