Point: The SAT is a necessary measure to compare students
Joe Zappa/Editor-In-Chief
You can’t handle the truth. That is the message that screams to me as kids around me incessantly decry the results of their latest SAT scores. On the morning about three weeks after the test when each kid goes online to check his scores, a familiar reaction will cover their faces—disbelief. Junior year is a good time to take a look at oneself, and for some the computer screen lit up with their SAT score is the mirror image of their abilities staring them in the face to say, “Wake up.”
It must be understood that the SAT is not the be all and end all of college admissions. It is a major component in admissions, and for some it will be the primary reason they are rejected or admitted to a certain college, but for most it is merely another cog in the giant machine of pulleys and gears that make up the college application. Furthermore, the SAT does not define one’s worth in society. It cannot define your work ethic, character, or interests, and that is why many other factors are taken into consideration during college admissions. However, the SAT can do a relatively good job of defining intelligence, and that is what it is used for.
As was referenced earlier, the SAT is a huge sticking point for many students because it is just a test score—a number on a screen that cannot be undone or made unclear. Many students, teachers, and parents denounce the test because it does play such a major role in college admissions, and they consider this unfair. Their argument is that some students are “simply not as good at taking tests” as others. However, I’ve yet to see a statistic measuring a student’s test taking ability. In fact, I’m not sure if such a thing as a bad test taker exists at all. Regardless, we can be sure that there is a definite correlation between SAT score and intelligence.
Claude Steele, former chairman of the department of psychology at Stanford University, affirmed the correlation between SAT and IQ. “The SAT and IQ test correlate very highly. Between the SAT and the IQ, they correlate almost as much as the SAT correlates with a second administration of the SAT, as much as it correlates with itself. So they’re very similar tests in content.”
Furthermore, it must be understood that SAT and IQ scores are both aimed to evaluate g, one’s general intelligence factor. A study conducted by department of psychology professor Douglas K. Detterman of Case Western Reserve University found a 0.82 correlation between g and SAT scores, indicating an extremely close relationship. Other studies have shown similar results.
Therefore, it is fair to say that the SAT is a useful measure of students’ intelligence. Through this tool, college admissions officers can compare applicants and determine who the brightest students truly are.
Opponents of the SAT may be quick to ask why GPA cannot simply be used to evaluate students’ intelligence. Though intuitively four years of coursework seems a better judge of talent than one, four-hour test, that is not the case. GPA is an extremely subjective measure of ability. It varies based on the level of coursework taken and more so by the school district and region a student lives in.
Many administrators grapple with the difficulty of elevating the grades of students in Advanced Placement (AP) classes so that they are more equal to the grades those students would earn in regents level classes. All school districts have different weighting policies (another strike against using GPA to compare students from across the nation) and these policies rarely satisfy struggling AP students.
The SAT eliminates this argument. No matter where you live or what level of classes you take at your high school, every student in America who takes the SAT takes the same exam. This makes it easy for admissions officers to evaluate whether a student who struggled in very difficult classes is smarter than a student who breezed through more basic courses with a perfect average, and whether the valedictorian of a rural high school in North Dakota really is smarter than a lower ranked kid from a competitive high school on Long Island.
The SAT comes under such heavy fire from some students and parents because it is a number that cannot be disputed or (in most cases) significantly bolstered. GPA is a product of work ethic and intelligence, but an SAT score has been proven to evaluate intelligence without the clouding factor of work ethic. It is the only way for college admissions officers to compare an increasingly global pool of applicants without subjectivity.
Students hate the SAT because they don’t like it when a test score tells them they’re intellectually inferior to others and thus cannot attend the schools of their dreams. Unfortunately, that’s life. Some people have different skill sets and capabilities than others, and this is why only a select few can attend the nation’s top universities. That is a fact, and everyone must accept it.
Counterpoint: The SAT is an unfair test of a student’s ability
Karan Chhatpar/Managing Editor
The SAT — everyone needs to take it to get into college, and without taking it, the chances of going to a decent university drop drastically. But how can a four hour-long exam judge whether someone will be successful in life? How can a test hold such a prominent place in not just America, but the entire world?
The SAT, logically, should not have any power in determining whether a person gets into a certain college. An exam that only tests skills in math and English cannot be a good indication of a person’s intelligence, since there are always those who are either good at one or the other, or even good at something else that fits into neither category. For example, a biology-buff won’t necessarily be skilled at analyzing literature or solving complex math, but he could be a prodigy of biological theory, or even the next Darwin.
Most college informational packets contain pages listing their majors, tuition fees, and sports offered, and there is almost always a section relating to the first-to-third quartile range of SAT scores. The test has permeated the entire college admissions system. Although it is not the deciding factor in college acceptance, admittance decisions between equal candidates can be settled in the admissions office based on who has the higher SAT score, and many students are peeved, to say the least, that their SAT scores may not be high enough to get into their top school.
Anyone who has taken an SAT review course knows that getting a good grade on the exam is based on knowing the tricks to the exam. Well that’s obviously a good way to measure intelligence, right? Definitely, a test based on how well a person can take the test, not how much he actually knows, is a solid indication of intelligence and college-level aptitude.
There are also so many factors that could either raise or lower a person’s grade on this test. There’s the person who was having a lucky week and ended his Saturday with an excellent SAT score, or the other student who has had a high fever for the past few days but knows he must take the test so he can get into his top school.
Some might call the SAT just a gear in the large part of college admissions, but it cannot be denied that this gear is pretty big for being a four-hour test which may determine whether or not a student is accepted to a school. Who’s to say that there are genuinely intelligent people who don’t know strategies to the SAT, and who’s to say that there are not unintelligent people who are good at knowing the tricks behind the exam?
The test deserves no place in deciding whether a student will be a good choice during the admissions process. Agreed, it does show a slightly positive correlation with IQ, but it isn’t significant enough for one to say that the SAT is a standardized IQ test, or that it can accurately measure intelligence. Instead of one single test based on two high school classes, colleges should focus more on what is actually done in high school: four years of rigor in a myriad of classes, including specialized, honors, and AP classes.
College is supposed to come right after high school, so what sense is there in basing college admissions largely on a test that doesn’t draw from all of high school? The SAT has no reasonable backing except for a student to personally judge his skills at math and English. This exam simply doesn’t deserve a spot on college applications because there are just too many things wrong with it.