First of all, there is no way to verify that these are in fact Sarah’s scores and not a photoshopped fake of the same.
Lat’s assume, for this thread, that they are true. If these are truly her scores, what do they tell us? What do the numbers represent?
425 Verbal
416 Math.
If the number are true, it supports that she is not especially bright or near the best. It supports that she is not the type of person that should be Governor or VP if you are the type that think leaders should be brighter than normal.
Basically it confirms that she average at best.
Seriously? Because those scores are TERRIBLE. I did WAY better than that in math, and I am really, really terrible at math.
But it’s probably not real. I mean, where would you get such a thing?
I will argue that it supports only the proposition that she is not especially good at taking the SATs. While I don’t think she’s particularly bright, these scores, in and of themselves, aren’t really evidence of that. Her comments, positions, and history are another matter, of course.
Were SAT scores ever not only multiples of 10?
Yeah, they were at one point, although it was before I ever took them in the mid-90s. Something I learned on the SDMB.
So, can somebody explain this SAT business to a foreigner? What would be good, what average, what the maximum? What’s the role of the SAT in the US?
There is a way to confirm it.
SAT scores at the time always ended in ‘0’. No one who took the test in 1981/82 would get a 425 verbal. 420 or 430 would be the score. Same for math.
My scores in 1980 were 710 math and 740 verbal. That was the second test; the first time I took it was the previous spring, with 660 and 670 respectively. (I remember all these scores clearly because of a bet I had with K— W—, who beat me the first time with a 1350, and then beat me the second time with a 1460. I couldn’t win.
We’re about the same age and I concur. Coincidentally, I saw my Mom last weekend and she handed me a large envelope that she found with a bunch of my old high school report cards and such including my SAT scores.
Scholastic Aptitude Test - up until recently, 1600 was the highest you could score, but they added a section, so now it’s 2400 max. I seem to recall being told that you were given 200 points just for taking the test.
When I took mine in the early 70s, without benefit of any prep courses, I got 670 on both Math and Verbal, for a combined score of 1340. I eventually got a degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, so I guess the score indicated I had the aptitude to survive college.
Colleges and universities used to use these scores to predict your ability to handle higher education, although lately, some don’t seem to care. But I suppose you need some sort of criteria for deciding who gets the available slots in a school.
They just changed it last year (maybe two years ago?) so now it’s different, but for ages and ages, the top score has been 800 and the bottom…200? Average varies from test date to test date. (When I was in high school, there would be one test date per month, I think, for the entire country. You’d send in your info and a check and they’d assign you a local high school to take it at. Now I expect it’s computerized and you can take it every day of the week, which is how the GRE is.)
FWIW, I got a 510 on math, which was in the 50th percentile IIRC, but is pretty lousy for someone actually planning to go to a four year university, and balanced it out with a 690 in verbal, which was something like the 98th percentile.
They’re to show that you have a minimum level of schooling, sufficient to get into at least a low-quality college.
Past entry into college, they’re mostly used by people who want to brag about how smart they were in high school, rather than how well or poorly they’ve done since then.
If this is all true, then high scores on the SAT have little influence on one’s ability to be elected mayor or governor, in Alaska, anyway.
Not sure what they mean about the ability to get John McCain elected President.
Photoshopped and meaningless besides. How you tested on a college prep standardized test has very little real life meaning after the age of 22.
I didn’t test terribly well on the SATs and scored very well on the ACT. It means squat now because I’ve already got my BA degree.
I recall that low 900s were average in the early 80s. The numbers were inflated in the 90s I believe and then changed a few more times.
That is a great point. I never actually thought about the fact that SATs where multiples of 10. I’ll believe Bricker when he says they always ended in 0s then.
As to what it shows, a below average SAT is not what I would want to see in a potential President. I stand by my statement. We should want our Presidents to from among the best. I would think someone below a 900 in 1982 is not really a choice from the best.
Here are the percentile charts. College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools
Here is what they mean SAT - Wikipedia
I’ve revised the thread title so people can either participate in or avoid this thread, knowing it’s about candidate Palin instead of someone’s kid or niece or something.
They’d primarily measure her ability to take standardized tests. You could use them as part of a case that she was a poor student - the fact that she later went to six colleges doesn’t really point in her favor - but so what? She took the test 25 years ago and if she was a bad student then, she would appear to be a much more dedicated person today.
It’s not really a “gift” so much as a function of the scale on which the test is graded, I think.
When I took them in 1968/69 they did not end in 0. My verbal score didn’t. I worked in the College office of my high school, and distributed them to the students, and they certainly didn’t then. I don’t know when they changed it - a quick Google showed nothing.
SAT scores are not supposed to predict how you do in life, only how you will do in college. If she did wander through five, I’d say they did a good job in this case - assuming they are correct, which might be a stretch.
Looking at the image, did people really self report their grades in 1982? I’m pretty sure we didn’t. Score reports in 1968, by the way arrived at a high school as a fanfold set of labels from a line printer, each of which had to be removed and pasted onto a book which explained what the scores meant.
Mine were rounded to 10 in 1976. I’m not a Palin fan, but these are shopped.
There were all sorts of weird things that you self reported. I was going to shred all of that crap that my Mom gave me in that file but luckily I didn’t. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back home in a few hours. I took the SAT twice, late '81 and early '82.