What was Wwanderer's SAT score?

[occasionalhobbyist]

As a poor kid who got relatively close to 1600 on the SATs, I would just like to say that it sure as hell beats not getting into a college because no one else in your family ever went.

It may not be a meritocracy -- if I recall my numbers correctly, there's also an extremely high correlation between socioeconomic status and performance in primary and secondary school. But it is at least a step in the right direction from an aristocracy.

 

[antnee]

High SAT scores (1300's for me way back when) and all calc, differential equations and physics classes were great! Since the mid 80's all the high tech manufacturing left the Long Island area I have found myself programming equipment to make pudding. And I can't remember the last time I actually used a calc equation.

 

[Geezy Muldoon]

Predictor of Success

I scored respectably on the SAT (somewhere in the neighborhood of 1490. I have a hard time counting.). Plus I received a perfect 800 on the SAT History Achievment test.

My first semester in college I took a required sociology course. As my project and paper for this course, I did field research on the best pick up lines for getting laid and then wrote my results up while high on methedrine.

I wrote all my best papers on methedrine.

I later re-took Sociology 101 at another college.

 

[Wwanderer]

It is best used as an alternative route, not as the only/main route to college

Originally posted by occasionalhobbyist
As a poor kid who got relatively close to 1600 on the SATs, I would just like to say that it sure as hell beats not getting into a college because no one else in your family ever went. It may not be a meritocracy... But it is at least a step in the right direction from an aristocracy.

Precisely my point. The best part of the SATs, and I agree with jm that there are many bad aspects, is that they can offer students an additional opportunity to get into college.

I had a fairly close friend in college, lived down the hall in my dorm, who was sure that he got in only due to his really high SAT scores because nothing else in his application looked at all positive, according to his account. He was bored stiff in high school and a rebel, or maybe just a smart ass, by nature and was constantly in trouble. His grades were low, and his teachers all hated him he claimed. He was pretty alienated and and "troubled" in college too, but he did manage to get a degree in computer science. A few years after graduation another friend of his from college helped him find a job with a start-up computer company in Silicon Valley; he was one of the first 20 or so employees. It was one of the early success stories; if I mentioned its name, most UGers (but perhaps not all) would know it. He is one of their VPs now and is planning to retire soon. If he hobbies these days, he could easilly afford to see Anne Marie monthly or more. If he doesn't send ETS donations, he should.

-Ww

 

[occasionalhobbyist]

I guess that was my point. ETS was created to establish a meritocracy in higher education admissions. That is hasn't is probably a greater testament to how entrenched the 'episcopacy' (or natural aristocracy), is than to the test's insufficiency. See Lemann, N. "The Big Test." FSG, 1999.

 

[justme]

Heh, Wwanderer's using my favorite pro affirmative action argument against me (provide me with the next best alternative).

Well, given that class rank and courseloads are better predictors of success, why not just simply use them and eliminate the SAT? I'd argue that including the SAT in admissions criteria is generally adding in noise (a variable with such tremendous error, that it only creates more error in the agregate variable).

I'm willing to admit that there may or may not be anecdotal exceptions to the utlitity of the SAT (although I'm intrigued at the claims of people, myself (sometimes) included, that 'know' exactly why the got into such and such college when admissions officers are fairly tight lipped about this stuff). Still, I think the overall harm it does to large groups like women and minorities (groups that don't really need more obstacles getting into college) more than offsets the benefits the small group of smart slackers.

And since we're all playing the game 720 verbal, 780 math. (Although I should disclose that I had taken it previously in 7th (1040) and 8th (1280) grades).

 

[Wwanderer]

Originally posted by justme

1 - Well, given that class rank and courseloads are better predictors of success, why not just simply use them and eliminate the SAT?

2 - Still, I think the overall harm it does to large groups like women and minorities (groups that don't really need more obstacles getting into college) more than offsets the benefits the small group of smart slackers.

1 - Granted that those factors are better predictors, the reason for not dropping the SATs, put forward by OH and me above, is that they are probably also more biased even than the SATs against some disadvantaged groups, at least in many schools and areas.

2 - So, the conclusion (which I admit I cannot demonstrate but which I feel reasonably confident is correct) is that the SATs reduce the obstacles such groups face by giving them a way of "going around" the (local) system(s) for evaluating students. In the place and time I went to high school (medium sized Southern town/city in the mid-1960s), I think that a black student would have had very close to zero chance of being ranked at or close to the top of the graduating class and would have had to fight hard just to be allowed into the college prepratory classes, much less to take a heavy course load. The SATs were also no doubt biased against him, but less biased than the situation he/she faced overall. (Btw, you can make a fair case that a small group of "smart slackers" in high school end up later contributing far more than their numbers would suggest.)

-Ww

PS - I thought that this thread was about guessing, not disclosing, scores!

 

[hot4chicks]

IMHO, people who sit around saying how smart, rich, good-looking etc, they are, usually aren't.

 

[occasionalhobbyist]

Originally posted by justme


1 - Well, given that class rank and courseloads are better predictors of success, why not just simply use them and eliminate the SAT? I'd argue that including the SAT in admissions criteria is generally adding in noise (a variable with such tremendous error, that it only creates more error in the agregate variable).

2 - and since we're all playing the game...

1 - I don't think you can build a viable model that produces standard measures of class rank and courseloads. Too complex.

2 - I didn't think that was the game either. I haven't told anyone how big mine is...

p.s. - my wife, who one of the smartest people I know despite having hitched herself to me (note use of sarcasm for those concerned by my self-loathing tendencies), was once placed in a remedial English class by a district that she had moved into in the middle of the school year. After much consideration, we believe this is because she was a) Hispanic b) new and c) shy. (For those keeping score, she's still Hispanic.)

Sometimes, not all the times, but sometimes, teachers don't know what the fuck they're doing.

 

[pjorourke]

Originally posted by occasionalhobbyist
because she was a) Hispanic b) new and c) shy. (For those keeping score, she's still Hispanic.)

Is she now b) used?

 

[Wwanderer]

Originally posted by occasionalhobbyist
Sometimes, not all the times, but sometimes, teachers don't know what the fuck they're doing.

It is not even necessarily a matter of teacher incompetence, there are some really scary educational studies that show how insiduously and indirectly teacher expectations, attitudes and biases can affect those of her/his students, including the students' own self-expectations etc. The SATs are biased, at least in large measure, because they are written by people with various cultural and personal biases of their own, but at least the student taking an SAT is shielded to some extent by the impersonal/mechnaical nature of the test and its scoring. Not so for the direct interaction of student and teacher in the classroom.

-Ww

 

[justme]

Let me restate that my problem with the SAT is less that it's unfair (which it is) than that it doesn't do what it is designed to do.

Let me also state that subjective, although inherently unfair, is not necessarily more fair than objective.

Finally, let me state that it has been proven possible to produce a student body that is relatively diverse, universally well qualified, and fairly bright. This was done pretty consistantly in the late 70's by various Ivy type schools and the UC system.

 

[Slinky Bender]

You have no idea how much, at these Ivy schools, at that time, the "homogenous" student body, once there, bent over backwards to "Ghetto-ise" themselves.

 

[occasionalhobbyist]

Originally posted by pjorourke
Is she now b) used?

A fair amount, yes. But she still looks good!

 

[Wwanderer]

Originally posted by justme
Finally, let me state that it has been proven possible to produce a student body that is relatively diverse, universally well qualified, and fairly bright. This was done pretty consistantly in the late 70's by various Ivy type schools and the UC system.

At least the Ivies (less sure about UC system) used the SATs fairly heavily in selecting these classes, among other idicators/measures. The conventional wisdom among most admissions people (which does not mean it is true, of course) is that there is no single good way of doing it, so the best strategy is to do it several different ways, each with serious but different flaws, and then make some linear combination of the results.

-Ww

 

[Wwanderer]

Originally posted by slinkybender
You have no idea how much, at these Ivy schools, at that time, the "homogenous" student body, once there, bent over backwards to "Ghetto-ise" themselves.

They still do; that has not changed.

-Ww

 

[occasionalhobbyist]

By the way, has anyone noticed that the poll is all over the map? Apparently, no consensus is developing about your intelligence, Ww. Or, should I say, no consensus is developing about your performance on a flawed, invalid, non-predictive test...

 

[Wwanderer]

Originally posted by occasionalhobbyist
By the way, has anyone noticed that the poll is all over the map? Apparently, no consensus is developing about your intelligence, Ww. Or, should I say, no consensus is developing about your performance on a flawed, invalid, non-predictive test...

Apparently polls are another unsatisfactory way of assessing people's intelects (since they give no clear answer).

-Ww

 

[justme]

It makes all the sense in the world to judge 'polls', by this one.

SB - I suppose I am biased by the fact that a large majority of the minortites I've known who went to Ivy's at that time came from modest backgrounds. Or rather, the method by which I would meat such people is obviously biased towards my meeting people from modest backgrounds.

 

[Wwanderer]

Originally posted by justme
It makes all the sense in the world to judge 'polls', by this one.

It was a joke. It is a Catch-22; SB deducts points if you explicitly identify jokes, and the medium makes it impossible to implicitly identify them with tone or body language.

-Ww