I don’t remember what was mentioned (in a different conversation) as a respect-worthy SAT score, I just remember being shocked and horrified at how low it was and drawing on reserves of tact to (I hope) not show how I felt.
My friend had just gotten to college, and was half listening to his randomly assigned roommates talking about their SAT scores. He overhears: “Yeah, I got a 790”. “Holy shit!” my friend interjected. “That’s fantastic! Which section?”
I’m pretty sure it’s more like the 0.1%. I went to a fairly competitive private university (one that consistently makes the top 50 schools list in the US). Nevertheless, I was briefly anointed with my SAT score as a nickname freshman year, after mistakenly assuming that it wouldn’t stand out that much and being willing to tell people what it was.
At my high school, someone retook the SAT after he got a 1580 and not a 1600, someone who got a perfect score on the PSAT retook the SAT too. (I’m not sure what her original SAT score was. It’s more likely she bubbled incorrectly or something than bubbled correctly and got a score much below 1600, and there could have been a problem like that.)
I’m skeptical of this story. Even taking for granted that this was when the test was still normalized to 1600 as the max, if one looks at even a mediocre state school a total of 790 would be clearly in the very bottom. Note that in this data, the bottom 1 percent for both is slightly over a 400 for both sections. So someone scoring in that range is possible but extremely unlikely. This is around the 15th percentile for anyone taking the test, but the very bottom don’t generally go to real colleges at all.
The average SAT score for a men’s basketball player at that school is 916, for football it is 926, over 250 points lower than the average of non-athletes. Consider that there are about 100 football players per school, and not all excel at athletics enough that admission departments change their standards for them equally. If 50 of them average 1050 (about bottom 20th percentile), the other 50 would have to average 790 for the average for all of them to be as low as 920. If 90 average as high as 940 (about bottom 5th percentile), the other ten would have to average 790 for their collective average to be 925. A single student, who might or might not only be a marginal football player, who scored 1140 (not an outlandishly high score, 40th percentile at that school) would raise the football average about two points.
Considering that average football player SAT scores are tracked and schools desire their admissions standards to be perceived as high, both as part of the NCAA certification process and to justify their money-making programs, Goodhart’s law should probably be applied an additional time. Not only are SAT scores imperfect proxies for intelligence, average SAT scores for a sport are imperfect proxies of their admission standards, which are probably even lower than implied. This means it is very likely that some individuals have far less than the average program SAT score.
Lowest was 200 per section, and that was when it was out of 1600. So 400 was the lowest possible.
Perhaps someone considering a three section test said “600 is the lowest possible” to someone who applied that to what they considered a two section test, and concluded “300 is the lowest per section”, which you picked up.
My friend had just gotten to college, and was half listening to his randomly assigned roommates talking about their SAT scores. He overhears: “Yeah, I got a 790”. “Holy shit!” my friend interjected. “That’s fantastic! Which section?”
“What do you mean which section?”
It’s things like that which make me mentally apply the ‘We Are The 1%’ slogan… to IQ.
I’m pretty sure it’s more like the 0.1%. I went to a fairly competitive private university (one that consistently makes the top 50 schools list in the US). Nevertheless, I was briefly anointed with my SAT score as a nickname freshman year, after mistakenly assuming that it wouldn’t stand out that much and being willing to tell people what it was.
At my high school, someone retook the SAT after he got a 1580 and not a 1600, someone who got a perfect score on the PSAT retook the SAT too. (I’m not sure what her original SAT score was. It’s more likely she bubbled incorrectly or something than bubbled correctly and got a score much below 1600, and there could have been a problem like that.)
That’s also a quote from “Perks of Being A Wallflower”, incidentally. Which doesn’t mean it’s not a true story.
I’m skeptical of this story. Even taking for granted that this was when the test was still normalized to 1600 as the max, if one looks at even a mediocre state school a total of 790 would be clearly in the very bottom. Note that in this data, the bottom 1 percent for both is slightly over a 400 for both sections. So someone scoring in that range is possible but extremely unlikely. This is around the 15th percentile for anyone taking the test, but the very bottom don’t generally go to real colleges at all.
The average SAT score for a men’s basketball player at that school is 916, for football it is 926, over 250 points lower than the average of non-athletes. Consider that there are about 100 football players per school, and not all excel at athletics enough that admission departments change their standards for them equally. If 50 of them average 1050 (about bottom 20th percentile), the other 50 would have to average 790 for the average for all of them to be as low as 920. If 90 average as high as 940 (about bottom 5th percentile), the other ten would have to average 790 for their collective average to be 925. A single student, who might or might not only be a marginal football player, who scored 1140 (not an outlandishly high score, 40th percentile at that school) would raise the football average about two points.
Considering that average football player SAT scores are tracked and schools desire their admissions standards to be perceived as high, both as part of the NCAA certification process and to justify their money-making programs, Goodhart’s law should probably be applied an additional time. Not only are SAT scores imperfect proxies for intelligence, average SAT scores for a sport are imperfect proxies of their admission standards, which are probably even lower than implied. This means it is very likely that some individuals have far less than the average program SAT score.
That’s an excellent set of points. I clearly underestimated the chance of such an event occurring.
Is it even possible to get a 790 total? I thought the lower bound was 900!
Lowest was 200 per section, and that was when it was out of 1600. So 400 was the lowest possible.
Perhaps someone considering a three section test said “600 is the lowest possible” to someone who applied that to what they considered a two section test, and concluded “300 is the lowest per section”, which you picked up.
Oh, okay. (I’m looking it up on the wiki now; I actually wasn’t aware it used to be a 1600 point scale.)
Nevermind then. So 790 would be… 13th percentile. Ouch.
(Wikipedia gives 890 as the lowest point on the chart here, though it is for the new system.)