[thecleaner]

I guess thats a problem with the SAT. I saw a couple of questions and a lot of them are very easy for college entrance exams. I think university entrances should be a bit on the tough end (China's standardized tests and JEE from India come to mind). Of course schools could look at a lot more but if so many people get perfect scores then that clearly is a problem with the tests themselves.

[Amezarak]

0.06% of ACT takers scored perfectly in 2013. A smaller percentage get a perfect score on the SAT. I don't think the problem is the test is too easy.

The problem is there are 400 million people in the USA, and the 1-2% of entering freshmen across the country having high scores mostly apply to the same few schools.

[georgecmu]

The challenge of SAT is not in the difficulty of the questions. The challenge is that there are 40 questions and you have 1.25 minutes to do each one.

[Ntrails]

When i was at uni they described the intention as:

    40% for book learning (memorisation)
    30% for variations on things you've seen before
    30% for applying concepts in new ways, requiring "deeper" understanding

From that perspective, if I want good students I don't care if you can answer a standard question quickly and accurately, I care whether you can reason something about a harder question given time to think.

[thecleaner]

I see. That is tight. But that simply tests thinking under time pressure. Fewer problems with higher difficulty level may help here (like the Olympiads or Putnam but both being extreme examples). But the challenge would then be to come up with large number of such problems.