[CompelTechnic]

The SAT reliably correlates with IQ, and of any psychometric variable we are able to measure, IQ has the strongest correlation with long-term socioeconomic success. Insofar as it is useful to funnel smart people into college, using the SAT is a good way to filter them.

[mj_olnir]

Do you have a source on the first claim?

I'm curious, as someone who was slightly involved with a documentary [1] exposing pitfalls of standardized testing. Generally the SAT only has shown a weak correlation between test scores and first year (some studies I read showed only first semester, but I don't have them on hand right now) collegiate performance [2].

[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3393042/ [2] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/26/new-research-...

[jasode]

>Generally the SAT only has shown a weak correlation between test scores and first year [...] collegiate performance [2].

That's not what your cite says. The InsideHigherEd article actually shows a strong correlation between SAT and grades but Aquinas identified a minority % of schools where it didn't. Please carefully read the 3 bullet points again and notice the minority percentages.

Your qualifier of "Generally" in your comment is misrepresenting Aguinis' findings.

[CompelTechnic]

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/Frey.pdf?origin=...

Correlation was .82 between the SAT and the armed forces vocational aptitude battery, which is designed as an IQ test.

https://pumpkinperson.com/2016/12/14/how-well-does-the-sat-c...

Correlation was 0.48 between SAT and Raven Progressive Matrices.

[artiste]

See Nassim Taleb's response to this

https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...

[kestreloats]

Why Taleb?

I hate that piece because most of what he's referring to has been dealt with for decades. It's like "narcissist who knows nothing about a field doesn't bother to learn anything about it and as a result takes down a strawman to make himself look good."

[asddasd]

Taleb should stay in his lane. He sounds like a "get off my lawn" old douche when he talks about anything other than financial markets. His central tenet in that article is that IQ doesn't correlate with wealth and is therefore useless. How enlightening.

[physics137]

Why not just administer an IQ test then?

[lmkg]

There is a Supreme Court ruling that IQ tests are assumed to unfairly disadvantage minority candidates. This was in the context of employment rather than college admissions, but I don't think anyone has been bold enough to test whether it applies.

Broadly speaking, IQ tests tend to include a lot of cultural assumptions and therefore members of the in-group will test higher than members of out-groups of the same aptitude. IQ tests are therefore treated as discriminatory (disproportionate impact) "by default." The administration of a particular test for a specific purpose can usually be OK'd by either showing that particular test is not discriminatory, or by showing that particular test has a measurable correlation to the specific purpose for which it's used. My understanding is that "specific purpose" in the employment context means the individual job description, not just hiring in general.

[cbm-vic-20]

> There is a Supreme Court ruling that IQ tests are assumed to unfairly disadvantage minority candidates

I wonder if there's an "IQ test" that unfairly disadvantages non-minority candidates. It would be interesting to see the results if the same pool of people (minority and non-minority) take both tests.

[erentz]

SAT presumably tests you have learned certain things in high school and so are ready for university. E.g. you won’t show up to your first university math class needing to learn all of high school math, and thus be unable to complete the class.

[terryschiavo22]

IQ is a lot like GDP. It doesn't measure what we need as accurately as we need. If you keep that in mind, though, it can remain a broadly useful metric.

[paulpauper]

IQ and the old SAT are highly correlated, and is why Mensa uses the SAT for admissions purposes

[threatofrain]

If we predominantly cared about intelligence then shouldn’t we not beat around the bush and directly test for it?

[kestreloats]

So I agree with you about SAT <-> IQ, and IQ <-> SES. However...

IQ isn't the only correlate of success. I think if you look at it all, there's a large dose of conscientiousness (which standardized testing companies are now going after), and attractiveness/charisma...

... but that's on the individual side of things. There's also a whole host of societal and random stuff that is outside the control of the individual, or maybe is significant to a person, but that studies tend to treat as irrelevant.

Also, saying that the SAT is useful as a selection device doesn't mean it's the only useful selection device, or that as a selection device it's very good. Offhand I don't remember the numbers, but standardized test score probably correlates .45 or so with first-year college grades? Think about that for a second. First, that's a ton of noise. That's not very predictive at all. Second, that's first-year college grades. Change the criterion but it's still the same: your best tool really is a pretty fuzzy predictor.

So now take this very fuzzy predictor, add some other fuzzy predictors that at best get things up to like maybe .6 correlation? Still fuzzy. Now you're going to be really selective on these things? What you're going to end up with is a lot of people who would have done as well but for whom the stars didn't align right at a particular period in their life. But now we as a society have this crazy income inequality, rent-seeking monopolies of all forms, and a general winner-takes all climate, so these small meaningless differences get amplified tenfold.

The conversations about this too have this kind of all-or-nothing quality, like you're forced to choose between "standardized tests are meaningless" or "standardized tests are valid predictors for a large portion of people so we need to treat them as infallible predictors for everyone." The truth is really much greyer than these positions: yes they predict, but they predict pretty weakly, all things considered, and generally for people who fit into a certain box. This all might be fine, except now we've structured our society in part around these oversimplified assumptions, pretending it works when it doesn't really. It might be ok when there's lots of second chances, lots of opportunities for people to get back on their feet from the vagaries of life, and good opportunities in general for everyone, but when resources gets hoarded by fewer and fewer, there's more noise, that's compounded by people gaming the system, etc. etc. etc.

Just as a thought exercise: what do most human traits look like in terms of distribution? They're pretty normal, pretty Gaussian. What does income look like? Not that, not at all. The discrepancy between them should be shocking to everyone.

[asddasd]

>IQ isn't the only correlate of success.

No is saying it is, clearly there other factors that may be much more important but IQ is clearly a factor.