38 Facts About SAT

1.

The SAT was originally designed not to be aligned with high school curricula, but several adjustments were made for the version of the SAT introduced in 2016, and College Board president David Coleman has said that he wanted to make the test reflect more closely what students learn in high school with the new Common Core standards.

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2.

Outside of college admissions, the SAT is used by researchers studying human intelligence in general and intellectual precociousness in particular, and by some employers in the recruitment process.

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3.

The College Board states that the SAT is intended to measure literacy, numeracy and writing skills that are needed for academic success in college.

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4.

Various studies conducted over the lifetime of the SAT show a statistically significant increase in correlation of high school grades and college freshman grades when the SAT is factored in.

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5.

Since 2007, all four-year colleges and universities in the United States that require a test as part of an application for admission will accept either the SAT or ACT, and as of Fall 2022, over 1400 four-year colleges and universities do not require any standardized test scores at all for admission, though some of them are applying this policy only temporarily due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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6.

Each SAT Reading Test always includes: one passage from U S or world literature; one passage from either a U S founding document or a related text; one passage about economics, psychology, sociology, or another social science; and, two science passages.

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7.

Mathematics portion of the SAT is divided into two sections: Math Test – No Calculator and Math Test – Calculator.

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8.

Version of the SAT administered before April 1995 had a very high ceiling.

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9.

Nevertheless, the College Board maintains that the SAT is essentially uncoachable and research by the College Board and the National Association of College Admission Counseling suggests that tutoring courses result in an average increase of about 20 points on the math section and 10 points on the verbal section.

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10.

Public misunderstanding of how to prepare for the SAT continues to be exploited by the preparation industry.

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11.

In 2009, education researchers Richard C Atkinson and Saul Geiser from the University of California system argued that high school GPA is better than the SAT at predicting college grades regardless of high school type or quality.

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12.

Psychometricians Thomas R Coyle and David R Pillow showed in 2008 that the SAT predicts college GPA even after removing the general factor of intelligence, with which it is highly correlated.

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13.

In 2018, psychologists Oren R Shewach, Kyle D McNeal, Nathan R Kuncel, and Paul R Sackett showed that both high-school GPA and SAT scores predict enrollment in advanced collegiate courses, even after controlling for Advanced Placement credits.

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14.

Education economist Jesse M Rothstein indicated in 2005 that high-school average SAT scores were better at predicting freshman university GPAs compared to individual SAT scores.

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15.

In other words, a student's SAT scores were not as informative with regards to future academic success as his or her high school's average.

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16.

Educational psychologists Jonathan Wai, David Lubinski, and Camilla Benbow observed that one way to increase the predictive validity of the SAT is by assessing the student's spatial reasoning ability, as the SAT at present does not contain any questions to that effect.

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17.

Outside of the United States, the SAT is considered for university admissions in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, and India, among dozens of other countries.

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18.

Additionally, they investigated the correlation between SAT results, using the revised and recentered form of the test, and scores on the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, a test of fluid intelligence, this time using a non-random sample.

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19.

Psychometrician Linda Gottfredson noted that the SAT is effective at identifying intellectually gifted college-bound students.

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20.

Consequently, standardized tests, such as the SAT, are a more reliable measure of selectivity than admissions rates.

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21.

One of the proposed partial explanations for the gap between Asian- and European-American students in educational achievement, as measured for example by the SAT, is the general tendency of Asians to come from stable two-parent households.

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22.

Mathematical problems on the SAT can be broadly categorized into two groups: conventional and unconventional.

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23.

However, the predictive validity of the SAT has been shown to depend on the dominant ethnic and racial composition of the college.

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24.

The rise in the number of students taking the SAT was due in part to many school districts offering to administer the SAT during school days often at no further costs to the students.

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25.

For instance, Intertel accepts scores of at least 1300 on tests taken through January 1994; the Triple Nine Society accepts scores of 1450 or greater on SAT tests taken before April 1995, and scores of at least 1520 on tests taken between April 1995 and February 2005.

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26.

Wai further showed that an individual's academic ability, as measured by the average SAT or ACT scores of the institution attended, predicted individual differences in income, even among the richest people of all, and being a member of the 'American elite', namely Fortune 500 CEOs, billionaires, federal judges, and members of Congress.

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27.

Nevertheless, some other top employers, such as Google, have eschewed the use of SAT or other standardized test scores unless the potential employee is a recent graduate because for their purposes, these scores "don't predict anything.

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28.

Wai told The New York Times, "Today the SAT is actually too easy, and that's why Google doesn't see a correlation.

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29.

In 2002, New York Times columnist Richard Rothstein argued that the U S math averages on the SAT and ACT continued their decade-long rise over national verbal averages on the tests while the averages verbal portions on the same tests were floundering.

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30.

Atkinson's critique of the predictive validity and powers of the SAT has been contested by the University of California academic senate.

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31.

In 2005, MIT Writing Director Les Perelman plotted essay length versus essay score on the new SAT from released essays and found a high correlation between them.

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32.

College Board, the non-profit organization that owns the SAT, was organized at the beginning of the 20th century to provide uniform entrance exams for its member colleges, whose matriculating students often came from boarding and private day schools found in the Northeastern United States.

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33.

In June, 1926, the first SAT, then known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, was administered to about 8, 000 students, many of whom were applying to Yale University and Smith College.

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34.

At this time, the SAT was standardized so that a test score received by a student in one year could be directly compared to a score received by a student in another year.

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35.

In 1994, however, the SAT was substantially changed in an attempt to make the test more closely reflect the work done by students in school and the skills that they would need in college.

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36.

In 2005, the SAT was changed again, in part due to criticism of the test by the University of California system, which said that the test was not closely enough aligned to high school curricula.

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37.

In January 2022, College Board announced that the SAT would be administered digitally to all test takers by 2024.

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38.

In 1990, a commission set up by the College Board to review the proposed changes to the SAT program recommended that the meaning of the initialism SAT be changed to "Scholastic Assessment Test" because a "test that integrates measures of achievement as well as developed ability can no longer be accurately described as a test of aptitude".

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