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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I am constantly amazed by all of the high stats on this board, which might support the privileged, prepped and supported argument. How are all of these kids scoring so high? In my day, at a competitive, privileged school, anything over 1400 seemed excellent, but here it’s almost scoffed at? Has the test changed that much? How do all of your kids have nearly perfect scores? Clearly I’m only starting the process with my own DC but they are already talking about not submitting because they won’t break 1400 and otherwise have all As. It just seems really broken to me. High school me would be getting rejected by every single school I applied to years ago. It really is nuts. With that said, it’s good to know there are many great schools out there, many paths to achieve the same goal/outcome. The kids are going to be alright. [/quote]

I think I know why.  It’s the accelerated classes and smart cohort in this area.  The kids push each other to be smarter.  DD goes to school in the South.  Students that she knows from that unnamed state struggle more than she does in math and science.  They are smart kids and DD does not love math and science.  She just had to push herself more and has a better foundation, that’s all.[/quote]

The College Board changed the distribution of scores. A 2100 on the old SAT should be a 1400 on the new one, right? Wrong. It’s a 1470 now. If you shift a normal distribution, the greatest percentage changes in any outcome in the new distribution are in the tails. There are just way more kids running around with high scores than there were 10 years ago, because they changed the test![/quote]

Any changes that occur in the distribution of scores can't change the fact that there's exactly 1% of students in each percentile. Percentiles are what colleges are interested in. The reason it's so much more difficult to gain admission to any given college today is the huge increase in the number of strong applicants.[/quote]

I buy that students are more prepared for college admissions than they were even ten years ago. I just think the compression of scores at the top weakens the SAT as a filter. Even if percentiles are still available, the compression of the distribution at the top of the normalized scale decreases the ability to draw distinctions between test-takers. There are more kids with scores in the ballpark of a "strong" SAT (1400-1600) than there used to be while there are not more seats at strong private research universities, SLACS, and top public universities. [b]The SAT does meaningfully predict college success, but not so strictly that schools would ignore a kid with a 1450 and great grades/ECs over a 1500 with great grades/weaker ECs.[/b][/quote]

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