Bill Bradley's SAT Score HAHAHA

Don't set too much store by it. I took the ACT for college and got a 33. Perfect score is 36. Took perfect 36's in two categories to get a 33.

I took the SAT in sixth grade to see if I was brilliant enough to go to IMSA, a smarty-pants boarding school in Aurora, IL. I forget what I scored but it was around 550 verbal and 400-something math, I think ( I hadn't taken junior high math yet!)

The point is, do you want me to be President? I sure as hell don't. My fiance got a 21 on her ACT, barely good enough to get into our college, but she got straight A's last semester. I didn't. Now who's smarter? She's dyslexic, by the way. She still can't get a decent score on a standardized test, and I can still ace one any time I choose. Ever wonder why black kids score so low on these tests? Because they really are subjective. I've seen a bit more of them than many people will, as an education major, and I don't trust the things. Too bad, too; it was nice thinking I was brilliant. :)
 
One of the big hush-hush subjects that the Education Testing Service does not want you to know, is that the SAT is an IQ test. The test gauges your cognitive ability without using subjective or cultural criteria.

Instead of looking at the underlying problems people like Jessis Jackson claim that the test is racist. The math section is realy biased, yeah right.
 
OK, so I'm biased. I scored a 640 on my verbal. I can't help but look at our "presidential candidate" Bill Bradley as an idiot.
 
730 on verbal, 590 on math...and I am sure there are a lot of people on TFL who think I am not that intelligent...<g>
 
To be fair, Bradley's reported score is for the verbal portion only, not the entire test. One wonders if he managed to redeem himself in the math section.
 
Oh I thought that was his total score. :)

When I was taking mine there was this jock-head who was saying how he needed to get a 700 so he could get his NCAA scholarship. I was tempted to ask him what section he was refering to. (He meant total. :D)
 
Roscoe, I trust you, but do you have a source I can check to verify that the SAT has been objectively determined to have no subjective criteria? I barely remember the SAT (it was 6th grade, after all) but I don't see how you can test verbal ability and have it be totally objective.
I also don't see how a test of math skills could be considered a test of cognitive ability. For instance, I do remember being stymied by the math section. I was in sixth grade and had not been taught algebra, among other things. The only questions I attempted involved arithmetic and probability, IIRC. I predictably got what would be considered a dismal score for a high school senior. Does that reflect on my cognitive ability?

Verbal skills are similar. A gift of insight or the ability to read well does not necessarily translate to cognition, since at least some of these skills have to be taught and learned. A man who can write a good essay is probably good at cognition but he may just be good at turning a phrase.

Finally, I was not taught that either the SAT or ACT was meant to be an indicator of cognitive ability; we were told that the ACT in particular "predicts future performance somewhat reliably"--meaning that many but not all people do well if they do well on the ACT, nothing more and nothing less. Perhaps it's such a big secret that they don't want to teach us the true nature of the test, or perhaps my education professors simply don't know enough about the job (actually, that second one is possible when it comes to something this esoteric.) I just don't want to conclude that without some evidence that the reasoning above, and my experience, are wrong.
 
Gwinnydapooh, those portions of the SAT for which you had not had preparation were not germane to determining anything. The raw scores would have been meaningless, with your not having had, e.g., algebra. However, your comparative score with others at that education level were meaningful.

Some tests are set up as measures of IQ; others set up to measure what one has learned in the sequence of ongoing education.

IQ tests can be set up as non-math, non-verbal--testing of small children, for instance. Great effort has been invested in making these culture-neutral so they can be compared world-wide...

Something new to me in these last 20 years or so is the idea of "preparing" for the SAT or the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). They didn't use the SAT when I graduated from high school in 1951; I did take the American College Entrance (ACE) when I got out of the Army in 1958. (Missed "egregious" at FSU and darned if I didn't miss it again when I transferred to Univ. of Fla! Dumb!) Prepare? Never heard of it!

Just ramblin', Art
 
Being a psychologist, I shall opine that the utility of the SAT is a political debate that makes the RKBA debates look like a tea party.

Standard story is that SATs correlated pretty well with GPA (r=.80) or so.

After that, well you can search the literature for the thousands of articles fighting this out.
 
By the way, I believe Bradley is a Rhodes Scholar, went to OxBridge. Same as Kris Kristofferson. He's a pretty smart guy. Mis-directed, but smart.
 
Gwinnydapooh, I believe you need to think of the standardized tests not as an absolute measure of anything, but as a *relative* measure of current ability. your scores compared with other kids your age would be meaningful, and a weak predictor of your abilities for the next year or two. of course, predicting abilities 4 or 5 years out is a suckers game; look how many kids get a full ride scholarship to Cornfield State and barely get the sheepskin.

in remote rebuttal of the Slate article, I find it hard to believe that Bradley, being an all-star athlete at a tony private school, didn't have all sorts of tutoring and whatnot during his undergrad days. maybe he truly is smart and got the grades via hard work and IQ points, but its fair for us to question the mechanism. if you or I had the kind of help that star athletes get, our grades would also have been mighty impressive.

as for the supposed biases in standardized tests, it is obviously not race-biased (how does the question "what is one-fourth of sixty-four?" know what gender or ethnicity the test-taker is?), but it is culturally and linguistically biased. the offspring of two college-educated parents, growing up in a well-educated household, are likely to be exposed to better speaking and writing skills. sounds unfair, until you look at it from the point of view of the parents. they probably got to that stage by going to war and getting the degree via the GI Bill, or working nights. such hypothetical parents paid a heavy price so Junior would have a head start.

wouldn't you know it, on a thread discussing IQ I'd make a typo that makes me look like a certified idiot... how do you spell "irony?"




[This message has been edited by Ivanhoe (edited February 13, 2000).]
 
Joseph,

I think that you may want to do a little research on Cecil Rhodes before you arrive at the conclusion that being "smart" is a prerequisite to being a Rhodes scholar. That is a WHOLE different topic unto itself, though I think it may be well worth the effort to go down that path.

I never took the SAT in high school. I did score in the top 1% in the nation on the PSAT when I was a sophmore, and was a National Merit semi-finalist. I DID take the SAT almost a year to the day from my high school graduation (was going to apply for an ROTC scholarship from the Navy, which I had joined after high school), and did better than I thought I would. My math score was 780 (I was going through nuclear power school for the Navy at that time and there's just a little bit of math involved there ;)), and I was surprised to find that I had scored 660 on the verbal side. I figured that I would do a little worse than that because I had been out of school for a year.

Does that add to, or detract from, the arguments surrounding the use of the SAT as any sort of gauge of learning ability? (BTW, I didn't apply for that scholarship, even though the counselor, after I handed him my SAT score, told me just fill out the paperwork and you'll be on your way.)
 
Bill Badley, like most anti-gunners,is a mindless moron. His buddy, AlBore is just more of the same. What has happened to the American gene pool?

------------------
Just as there is no such thing as too much fun,
there is no such thing as owning just one gun!!!

Off my meds (quit smoking), armed to the teeth, and loose on an unsuspecting society!!!
 
Anybody know of a Rhodes Scholar that's not a Socialist?

There's gotta be, but I sit here and can't think of one that has been a national figure.
 
sensop,

The reason you can't think of one who isn't a socialist is that THEY ALL ARE! That's the whole purpose behind the Rhodes scholar program: take the ideology of Cecil Rhodes and germinate it in people of political or social prominence (or who at least hold the potential for it).

Scary stuff. VERY scary stuff.
 
Not to be a jerk, but *of course* the parts of the test for which I hadn't been prepared were not germane. That's the whole point. If you were taught everything that appears on the test, then it is a fair test of learning ability since you had the opportunity and if you don't know something it will be because either ability or effort was lacking.
If you were NOT taught something that is tested, however, or if it was taught improperly, you will still miss the question but it will be NO indicator of your cognitive ability or how well you learn. You might have missed it because you're incapable of learning the concept but you can't tell from looking at the results WHY you missed it.

I agree that standardized tests are "relative," not absolute measures. I was trying to say that earlier in my rambling way. That's the whole point--it was asserted that there was some kind of cover-up of the "fact" that the SAT is an absolute measure of IQ. I was attempting to express my skepticism on that point. Even the relative indications, for example of my ability vs. my friends' abilities, are relatively weak IMHO. If the differences in our cognitive abilities were as large as the tests suggested, my friends should have been dullards in comparison to me. I promise they weren't (except that they thought I was some kind of genius because of those stupid standardized tests.)

You can predict which cars are carrying illegal drugs by picking out drivers of certain races in certain types of cars. Some cops claim better than the 80% accuracy mentioned above using this method. I realize the stakes for being wrong are higher but the principle is the same--it's a bad idea because percentages aren't good enough. You'll tap a lot of guys of average intelligence as really really smart (that's me :) ) and you'll also convince some smart people that they aren't too bright because they scored low on a test. I'm not saying there's no place at all for standardized testing. Just that it's crazy for us to make them as important to a person's life as we do.
 
BTW, I forgot a couple of things. Outside factors are another bugaboo that the test results can't tell you about. For instance, I took the ACT on a Saturday morning. My parents were out of town, so I played the toughest football game I've ever played (high school or college) on Friday night--2 overtimes and we won by 1 pt, I looked like I'd been in a car wreck. Then I did the requisite celebration, though I was pretty straightlaced and didn't spend all night partying like some of my friends. I was home by midnight. The test was at 8:30 am in the next town over and when I got up I hurt all over. I had also twisted my knee up badly and it was throbbing. I took some aspirin and went. I honestly don't know if it helped or hurt me, but I know I rushed through parts of the test. For all I know, I got lucky on the parts I rushed and it boosted my score. Somebody else might have been in similar condition except that it hurt their score. Who knows? I do know there was at least one guy there who didn't care and blew it off. Who knows how well he could have done?
BTW I was a lineman, or RFP (Real Football Player) not a quarterback or some similar girl-scout-honorary-team-member-type position, so I really did hurt all over.
 
My understanding of both the ACT & SAT is that they are fairly reliable predictors of how an individual will do their first year of college - only. Beyond that, all bets are off. For a truly objective test of acquired knowledge, the military ASVAB is just about tops.

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"...and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one."
Luke 22:36
"An armed society is a polite society."
Robert Heinlein
 
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