Q's about SATs, please explain for non-US

I often see the SATs mentioned by US posters.

I wonder a little about these SAT scores if they compare in any way with the UK’s Eleven + exams.

At what age do you take them ?

What does it enable you to do, or not do?

Are they as class(socio-economic) biased as ours used to be ?

Our 11+ exams used to be taken at age 11 :slight_smile: or there was another version at 14.

The object was to pass and so be assigned a better school.
These schools were for the most part better funded, had better facilities, staff, you name it.

This meant at an early age children were put into lifelong role boxes from which it was very difficult to escape, pass the 11+ and it got you to grammar school and a very good chance at university, fail and you went to secondary modern - a sure route to relatively lowbrow employment.

There were exceptions of course to this pigeonholing of children, but it would take extra tuition, and very pushy parents for the most part to trade up.

The main problem was the bias element of the questions which was blatently unfair.

There would be questions like “What is a decanter for?” which, when you think about it, does not give much hope for 11 year olds from blue collar backgrounds.

I imagine (possibly wrongly) that SATs work in a similar manner, not intentionally by race but do, in effect, operate that way.

ie, If the questions are geared to children from backgrounds
slightly higher up the socio-economic scale, then this would discriminate against any racial groups who have a tendency to belong to lower socio-economic groups.

This would then make it difficult for those groups to climb up the social ladder, thus reinforcing their negative position.

Our system effectively meant that those on the lower levels of society had to begin work earlier, paying taxes sooner, to support the education of the better off, who then went on to better paid employment because of their education.

It was , in effect, a method of ensuring the poor subsidised the education of the better off.

I should point out in our education system, at the time of 11+ that it was all free right up to and through BSc level, or rather, it was paid by the state.

SAT’s are standardized tests of verbal and math skills taken either as a junior or senior in high school (age 17-18 for most kids). There are some programs where kids take the SAT in junior high (age 13) or around there for certain honors programs, but they usually retake them again at the normal time.

Many colleges require the SAT or the ACT, a similar standardized test. Junior colleges and some small, private liberal arts colleges don’t. I think a handful of states require all their high school students to take them, but for most states it’s only the college bound who have to.

Are they economically or socially biased? Well, that’s a hole GD can of worms. Poor minority kids tend to do worse, except of course for Asian kids who excel. I tend to place the discrepancies on a combination of culture, English language ability, and inadequate schools rather than any inherent bias.

Supporters of the “bias” camp will quote some analogy question that uses the word “regatta” as an example, but this was a single question from the 1950’s, and the ETS (company that runs the SAT) has been extremely careful in the last few decades to screen every question for any potential tinge or racial or socioeconomic bias.

The main problem I have with the SAT is how removed the questions are from real life. Math questions involve fictional operators and column comparisons that are never encountered outside the SAT; not even in math class!

Do the SAT’s reinforce traditional class distinctions? No more than the school system as a whole. In fact, decades ago, elite private institutions like Harvard would gladly accept a white-bread kid with a C average from Exeter or some other snooty prep school over a hard working Jewish kid with an A average from the ghetto (God help you if you were black or hispanic). The SAT was designed to give an objective standard–everyone took the same test, so no more self-delusions about how Exeter is oh-so-difficult that a C there is as good as an A at a public school.

Eventually, the SAT spread and is now taken by millions of kids, and is used by most large colleges as a “first cut tool.” The University of California system, for instance, has a formula that combines SAT, GPA, and SAT II (specialized subject test) scores. Score high enough, you’re automatically in. Too low, automatic reject. This takes care of some huge percentage of the entering class, and admissions officers can then devote their time to the middle section. (The UC’s, BTW, have also been involved in a major campaign lately that has pressured the ETS to change the SAT.)

I used to teach a prep class for the Princeton Review, and the improvement I saw in the kids after only a handful of sessions convinced me just how easily the SAT can be mastered with appropriate preparation (and funds).

I’ll be glad to answer any other questions you have.

I’ll second what opus said about being able to “ace” the SATs if you have the cash to take an SAT prep course (of course the many books out there and the public library can be almost as good).

Another thing to note, along similar lines, is that many schools/school districts are pressured to raise students’ SAT scores, since low performance on the SAT is frowned upon by the powers that be since it reflects poorly upon the school. What you end up with, therefore, are English and Math classes (more English, IIRC) that take time out from “regular” lessons to teach and practice for the SATs.

This obviously, IMHO, says something about the validity of the test, as it seems as if it doesn’t test what the students are really learning in school.

The SAT II subject tests, OTOH, are much better, IMHO.

I took the SATs in 1978, along with what were then the ACHs, so my information may be a bit out of date (controversies and friendly discussion of the “College Boards” do not occur regularly in Canada!).

The SATs came in two flavours: math and verbal, while the ACHs were arranged by subject matter: Physics, Chemistry …

It was my impression at the time that the SATs were a fairly standard IQ test - there were very many questions, each relatively simple, but if you weren’t able to “change gears” rapidly you would do poorly. I took them on a Saturday morning and had intended to go to the Chess Club in the afternoon - but I was absolutely exhausted by the time I got out of the examination hall!

The ACH’s, on the other hand, were more like review examinations of the courses in school - and I recall being most annoyed that I had missed a simple question involving a “galvanometer” simply because we called it … something else (hey, it’s been 24 years!).

You can get more information here. I’m sure that a little digging would turn up research on what the SATs are measuring and why they’re unfair to somebody or other.

A little more information: The SAT(1), as has been mentioned, has two aspects: Verbal and Math. Each has a maximum score of 800, for a total of 1600. You get something like 600 points for free ‘for writing your name correctly,’ as they say, so each half is scored from about 300-800, and takes approximately 2 hours over several parts. The penalty for answering questions incorrectly is greater than that for skipping them altogether. Perfect scores are uncommon, but happen frequently enough that they’re not freak events (my WAG would be several per year, nationwide). Average scores vary from state to state (and within states, as well, of course); I believe for California they hover at about the 1000 range.

OK, I checked: California’s average is 517 M 496 V (total: 1013). The national average is 516 M 504 V (1020) (these figures are for 2002, and have remained reasonably stable for the past several years). 52% of HS seniors in CA took the test, compared to 46% nationally (cite) in 2002.

Anecdotally: if you score under about 1200 or so, you’re going to have trouble getting into the UC system or a private college or university; under 1000 and you’re probably SOL as far as state schools go, too. GPA and extra-curriculars help, and Opus1 pretty much covered how all that figures into the admissions process.

And, incidentally, I disagree that anyone has the ability to ace the SAT with enough preparation. My experience has been that test prep classes have the potential to help most people achieve some improvement, but not all people, and not unlimited improvement. IMHO, the primary thing that the test measures is the students’ ability to succeed at taking the SAT. In recent years the disconnect between what students are learning and what they’re being tested on in standardized tests has become greater. Particularly in California, where the gap in scoring on standardized tests between rich and poor counties is quite wide, this has been a topic of debate of late. For example, this spring the President of the University of California began a campaign to eliminate the SAT from the UC admissions process (cite).

One last thing: There’s also something called the PSAT, and I don’t know what the ‘P’ is for (has anyone in this thread yet explicated that SAT = ‘Standardized Aptitude Test’?), but it’s essentially the SAT Junior, and is intended to be taken ideally in your sophomore (2nd) year in high school (10th grade), and possibly again your junior year (3rd year of HS, 11th grade). It can only be taken once per year (in October), as opposed to the SAT proper, which is offered several times throughout the school year as well as in the summer. The primary purpose of the PSAT is to qualify students for the National Merit Scholarship program, which I believe to be run by the College Board, the same organization that owns and operates the entire PSAT/SAT/SAT II system. The formula for the PSAT is easy: they double your verbal score, add your math score, and if you obtain a certain level, you qualify for the first level of the scholarship (Semifinalist, I believe?).

At that point you have to write an essay and fill out an application, and if they like it you become a Finalist. Then there’s a series of formalities to becoming an actual Merit Scholar, at which point what typically happens is you get a $1000 or $3000 per year scholarship (IIRC) for college. Many colleges and universities use the Merit Scholarship information as a handy way to brag on their students without getting into specific numbers: “5% of the class of 2002 at X University are National Merit Scholars” is intended to sound nicer than “25% of the class of 2002 at X University had an aggregate SAT score higher than 1400” or what have you, I guess.

So, casdave… More than you wanted to know? :slight_smile:

A few nitpicks:

You get 200 points on each section, or 400 points total, as an absolute minimum. The whole exam takes three hours, plus some extra time in the beginning for filling out forms and such. Each section (there are, IIRC, five or six) is timed separately, so you’ll have 20-45 minutes for each.

Well, the SAT used to stand for Scholastic Aptitude Test, but now it just stands for SAT, since the College Board was attacked for presuming that they were testing aptitude. The P in PSAT used to stand for Preliminary; I’m not sure whether it still does. One is supposed to take the PSAT in October of eleventh grade. Many schools give it in tenth grade as well, but it only counts towards the Merit Scholarship in eleventh grade unless the student is going to college a year early, i.e. after eleventh. The scoring for the PSAT is the same as the SAT, except that it drops the final ‘0’ of each score, so a 71 Verbal PSAT = 710 Verbal SAT. (SAT scores are always multiples of 10.) No multiplying of verbals is required.

This site. American Mensa, show acceptance criteria for membership (smartest 2% of population) in terms of standardized test scores, which can be used as an applicant instead of taking a Mensa test.

I found a very interesting thing at the British Mensa site. I hoped to find a correlation between the test scores mentioned in the OP to the same level of intelligence. Instead I found that British Mensa does not accept ANY test score results other than its own.

And note that American Mensa does not accept SAT test results dating from 1994 through the present. Apparently the test changed at that point to something not sufficiently correlated to intelligence.

Just wanted to say a few things here:
The PSAT, for Merit Scholar purposes, was indeed at one point scored by doubling verbal and adding your Math Score. This gave you a maximum score of 2400 (or 240, if you prefer) - you would generally need something in the 220-225 range to be a Merit Semafinalist (Depending on the year, you needed to score higher than 99.5% of the people). 2/3 of the Semifinalists become finalists, and I have no idea why the 1/3 are dropped, since everyone at my high school who was a semifinalist, myself included, became a finalist.
In 1998 (I believe, it was the year after or two years after I took the tests), a third, essay based (though not 100% essay) writing section was added to the PSAT, mirroring the SAT II Writing test. The scores for merit finalists were then simply the addition of your scores from all 3 sections, as verbal was no longer doubled.

As for the merit scholarships, they are provided by the college you go to, generally. Some colleges give full tuition & room and board for merit finalists. The college I went to, Alfred University, did this. University of Toledo used to do this, and I believe that Old Miss gives Full Tuition for all Semifinalist & Higher.

I have no idea how well SATs reflect ability, but I took them twice, in 11th grade (16yrs old) and 12th grade(17yrs old).

Thanks for all the replies, it does seem that when the scope of British national curriculum educational tests was being introduced by the Thatcher government* they must have taken a look at SATs.

*(which was pretty slavish for all things American - especially privatised vs state services)

The idea of UK state schools testing students and having entry standards, which is what the old 11+ system really was, divides pretty much along certain fault lines in British politics.

I’d say there is nothing wrong with competition but the way we applied it was inherently unfair, and so far the will to come up with something hasn’t materialised.

SATs are based on one’s abiity to guess “C”. Pre-SAT courses are available to prepare one to guess “C”. What is truly astounding is the number of people who fail to guess “C”, and accordingly do poorly on their SAT.

(Mufffin, who scored 98th percentile by guessing “C”.)

(Um, I was about to use the following terms in my post, but perhaps as a Brit you might not recognize them: “Freshman” is the first year of college, “sophomore” is the second year, “junior” is the third year, and “senior” is the fourth year. The ETS is the Educational Testing Service, headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, the group that administers the SAT and some other tests.)

If you’d like to read a good book on the history of the SAT, read The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy by Nicholas Lemann. When the test began to be used, in the 1940’s, the ETS made claims for it that were pretty close to saying that it was an IQ test. This was why its categories are verbal and mathematical, not particular high school subjects, as if it were measuring native ability, not high school preparation. Now the ETS and everyone else admit that it’s nowhere close to be an IQ test. It tests some mixture of high school preparation, test-taking skills, and native ability, and there’s no agreement on how much of each is in the test. Everyone, including ETS, agrees that obviously if you go to a better high school (and there’s lots of variation in high schools in the U.S.) you’ll do better than if you go to a not so good one.

The only claim that ETS makes anymore is that the scores in the SAT are moderately well correlated with freshman grades in college. If you put together SAT scores and high school grades, it’s better correlated with freshman grades, but it’s still only moderately well correlated, not anything like a great predictor of them. Interestingly, it’s less well correlated with sophomore grades, still less well correlated with junior grades, and even less well correlated with senior grades. Indeed, the level of correlation falls even further with grad school grades, and the correlation between SAT scores and success in your career becomes less and less clear the further you go in life. This seems like a pretty good indication that what the SAT is measuring is mostly a set of knowledge that’s given to you in high school (and elementary school) and not native ability.

The ETS tried for years to deny that test-preparation services were useful, but now even they say that there’s evidence that use of test-preparation services will moderately increase your SAT scores. The two major SAT test-preparation services are Kaplan and Princeton Review. (Princeton Review has no relationship to Princeton University or to the ETS.) If you want a cynical view of the SAT, get a copy of the Princeton Review SAT preparation book. Unlike Kaplan, which simply treats the SAT as something that requires certain skills to be good at, Princeton Review considers the SAT to be a scam. They say, in effect, that since the ETS designs its tests so badly, you might as well scam them back by learning some test-taking tricks.

The thing is, the SAT tests your ability to take tests as much as anything else. I couldn’t afford the extra classes, books, study guides etc. when I took the SAT in high school; I just went. I’m fairly smart, but I’m really good at taking tests – I’m infamous in some of my classes for always being the first one finished. I know what I know, and what I can guess, and what I can remember if I think a minute, and what I have no effing clue about.

End result: terrible grades in high school, excellent scores on standardized tests, mediocre to fair grades in community college (took me a while to get over the “you mean I just don’t show up for class and no one cares?” idea), and so far a 3.81 GPA at a real University.

The thing is, for the majority of the population SAT scores seem to be a good indicator of the kind of thinking that tends to get good grades in the average college system. The SATIIs are a chance to show one’s thinking in more specialized fields that might have more bearing on their major. But there are always exceptions.

Oh, and I didn’t really see any bias in any of the standardized tests I took, but then again I wasn’t looking for it.

The test preparation services never seem to emphasize this, but the “penalty for guessing” on the SAT isn’t quite a penalty. The way it works is that you get points for a right answer, no points for no answer, and lose points for a wrong answer. But if you check the formulae for how many points you gain or lose, you will get exactly the same score, on average, by randomly guessing questions you don’t know, or by leaving them blank. It so happens that the most common answer is “C”, hence Muffin’s comment, but the distribution is close enough to even that it doesn’t really make much difference. And it takes a little longer to guess than it does to skip a problem, so blindly guessing “C” probably isn’t a good strategy. On the other hand, if you can eliminate one or more choices, or you have a hunch about the answer, guessing is worthwhile.

On the ACT, by contrast, there is no penalty for guessing at all: A wrong answer is graded exactly like no answer. It’s therefore always in your best interest to guess on the ACT, even if you’re clueless.

My Psychology teacher told us that the scores for each section (Verbal and Math) were standardized such that 500 was the mean and 100 was the standard deviation, with 3-sigma cutoffs in either direction. Thus the range 200-800. Thus the scores can be directly translated into percentile rank.

I thought PSAT stand for Pre-SAT. It is also used to prepare you for the SAT and find Seminafinalists of the other merit scholars. National Achievement Scholars are black students (I think), and National Hispanic Scholars are Hispanic students. These have a lower score in which one is eligible, for example my PSAT score was 180 (I took the test in tenth grade) more or less, and qualified as Semifinalist (and later finalist). I did not have to write an essay, but my school counselor had to fill a report about me.

National Hispanic (and Achievement, I suppose) also get merit scholarships, but since they are the low-rung scholars, they receive less money. I’m a National Hispanic Scholar, I receive $9500 plus fee waiver (I’m out of state) while attending UF. One other person (who is National Merit) receives around a couple thousand dollars more than me. Said person is also Hispanic, meaning yes, Hispanics and blacks can compete for National Merit Scholarships.