[marcuskane2]

Or they're a student who has to work a part-time job after school. Or they have a long commute. Or they have hours of practice for a competitive sport or extracurricular. Or they have to take care of their siblings, grandparent or sick parent. Or they were told by their parents and teachers that because they're smart and do well in school that they don't need to worry about studying. Or they know their parents can't afford an elite school anyway, so they know they just have to score well enough to get into a school with in-state tuition and noncompetitive admissions.

Two kids who both went to the same school, were told the same things about the importance of the SAT and dedicated equal time to study and preparation can probably say that the difference in their scores is indicative of differences in intelligence.

But any two random students? There are so many factors that could cause students to underperform their hypothetical max score if they had perfect conditions in the months leading up to the test and day of.

[somenameforme]

We're talking about the SAT, not the gaokao [1]. It's a relatively short test that you can take it whenever you want, you can even retake it if you want, however many times you want. There's minimal memorization required and it's mostly testing basic aptitude. But the overwhelming majority of people are of average aptitude, so the overwhelming majority of people will do "poorly" on the SAT when comparing themselves to outliers.

I don't understand the effort to try to eliminate the reality that innate ability exists. I think we should accept this and work to cultivate it. Just because somebody of average aptitude doesn't mean he might not excel in other ways. The world needs all sorts of people, and I think the ideal system would work to figure out and cultivate these talents in everybody.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaokao

[WalterBright]

I know a person who has a pretty modest ability, shall we say. But he still managed to become a multimillionaire as a young man.

[WalterBright]

There's plenty of time during school hours to study up on the math. My high school was deficient in math, everyone knew that, and I took math classes at the local community college to make up for it.

I never studied for tests in school, not for the SATs, either. I tried that in college, that did not work. The stress of the tests was pretty bad. I realized I had to study hard, and I did, and it was effective at reducing test anxiety.