SAT goes back to 1,600 scale, makes other major changes

See my post before yours.

 

Well sure, if everyone's scores rise, and you look at percentile, it won't matter. But somebody who scored a 1500 in 1995 is, in my book, smarter than someone who scores a 1500 on this updated version.

 

It sounds like they're constructing the SAT more like the ACT, which has always been dominant in Illinois, but for the first time last year passed the SAT in total national market share.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/what-the-new-sat-and-digital-act-might-look-like.html?_r=0

My son (junior) has already taken the ACT once. Like the SAT is talking about, the ACT's writing portion is optional, though if you want to get into a better school, it's not optional.

 

No.

The score is scaled to the percentile in the LSAT. So 99th percentile is a 172 in 1994, and 99th percentile is a 172 in 2014, evne though the 1994 person may have missed 10 questions and the 2014 person only missed five.

 

That's already the case, though, because a person who scores 1,500 (math/verbal) right now is doing it not because of the rigors of four years of high school but because of the test-prep machine. The University of Washington's head of admissions had a great quote addressing this: “It’s absurd, and that’s the nicest thing I can call it, how much test prep has grown and how guilt-ridden parents have become about trying to prepare their kids for the test,” Mr. Ballinger said. “If this helps test prep become learning, not gaming, well, shoot, that’s great."

 

I'm no testing expert, but I thought percentile was based on some formula of how everyone else scores. So one year, scoring 1500 may be good for the 97th percentile, for example, but the next year, if the average scores all rise, a 1500 might only be the 96th or 95th percentile. So somebody who scored a 1500 in 1995 might have been in the 97th percentile that year on a much more difficult test, but somebody who scores that same 1500 on this updated version might only be in the 95th percentile, because the test is easier and the average score is higher.

 

They grade everyone's test.

They rank them.

Then and only then do they slap a score on them.

 

Oh, I see. I thought that if you answered, say, 200 questions correctly your score was x. If you answered more or less than that correctly, your score would rise or fall.

But what you're saying is that you could conceiveably score a perfect 1600, I suppose, by answering just a few questions correctly if every other person failed to do even that, because at that point, you alone are the far right of that bell curve.

I didn't realize it was scored like that.

 

I don't think it is. I think there is a raw score and a percentile.

 

I don't know if the SAT is or not. I know the LSAT is.

And the SAT should be. It would prevent what you are afraid of, which is a legitimate concern.

 

Obviously, I haven't taken either since 1991, but the ACT seemed to be a much better barometer of overall intelligence.

With the SAT, if you have a good vocabulary and study, it's pretty easy to crush it since the math is so easy.

 

Pretty sure the SAT is not scored like that. It has an actual score, and then you get your percentile based on how that score ranks nationally.

Going back to 1600 was obvious since practically no colleges pay any attention to the writing score anyway.