The annals of IQ insanity: college admission boards rely on SAT scores because professional educators associate high IQ with probable academic performance. Somehow they intuited that high school GPAs weren't 100% reliable at signaling IQ. SAT scores, in contrast, correlate with fantastic fidelity to IQ.
We barely are allowed to think, let alone talk, about what IQ is and why it might be valuable (but it doesn't make you a good person!). Nevertheless, experience keeps confirming uncomfortable theories that it has something to do with competence in academic, technical, or cognitive tasks, which, for now, we still sort of think is a good thing, at least in the neurosurgeon who's about to operate on us. Also, competence in those brainy areas--whether or not we're prepared to admit it is useful to society or praiseworthy in any way--correlates well with financial success and level of education. What's worse, it seems to run in families, which means that on the whole it also correlates well with the financial success and education of one's forebears. The horrifying cherry on top is that it correlates strongly with race, the uncomfortable implication being that race also must have something to do with inherited qualities, not all of which can be scrubbed away by the right research filter.
Well, we can't have that. What we need is an adjustment to SAT scores for adversity. What qualifies as adversity? Among other things, all the background conditions that correlate strongly with low SAT scores, such as parents with all the economic, professional, and educational characteristics of groups with low SAT scores. But that's no good, because the idea of parents sneaks back in that uncomfortable concept of inheritance.
Inheritance doesn't tell you everything by a long shot. SAT scores give a pretty sharp picture of a college-bound student's horsepower; circumstances give a fuzzy one, though strongly correlated. We ought to be ignoring the fuzzy signal and using the sharper one. Instead, we're pretending that the fuzzy signal is some kind of contraindication, if not an outright thought crime for which we have to do penance.
If IQ matters, inheritance is going to favor some students over others, an advantage that also will be broadly reflected in their circumstances. If IQ doesn't matter, we ought to chuck the pseudo-IQ tests and make college admission a free-for-all: a simple lottery, or racial quotas, or even an expansion of the wide-open public school system to age 22. Or, heck, federally mandate lifelong free education for anyone who still feels he hasn't reached his full potential as a neurosurgeon.
They're bringing the segregation of identity politics to admissions indexes--rendering the indexes completely useless.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
SAT scores predict white college grades, whereas for blacks, there have been varying results.Who Will Succeed in College? When the SAT Predicts Black Students' Performance.
ReplyDeleteWithin certain important limits, the SAT tells us which White students will succeed in college, despite charges that test scores do not reflect ability and do not help colleges make better selection decisions (Crouse & Trusheim, 1988; Neill & Medina, 1989). Nonetheless, the SAT-College GPA correlations among majority students are consistent. While prediction from SAT scores to grades usually includes high school grades and may lead to complex prediction equations, the SAT-College GPA correlation is the essential predictive validity statistic. Fleming and Garcia's (1998) review of 12 studies of predictive validity among White students, which included studies conducted for up to thirteen years with up to eleven different samples, found that the average correlation was 0.342. The square of the correlation indicates the amount of variance accounted for by the SAT in college GPA; in this case the variance accounted for was 11.7%. (See Fig. 1.) With the exception of a study by Pennock-Roman (1990) which produced generally low correlations, the remaining eleven studies were distinguished by the consistency with which test scores showed either moderate or strong ability to predict college grades. In short, few measures rival test scores in consistency of prediction. Virtually the only other measure able to indicate how a student will fare in college is the high school grade point average.
SAT scores may not give the same reading of future success for African American students because the predictive validity is lower than for White students. However, the evidence for lower Black predictive validity is actually inconsistent and does not fall neatly into a single category. Some researchers have found strong positive SAT-GPA correlations for Black students [End Page 282] (e.g., Breland, 1978; Morgan, 1990), while other authors have reported that the SAT score bore no relationship to grades (e.g., Boyd, 1977; Miller & O'Connor, 1969), that students performed better than their test scores would indicate (Houston, 1983), and that students performed worse than their test scores would indicate (Breland, 1978; Crouse & Trusheim, 1988; Nettles, Thoeny, & Gosman, 1986; Kane, 1998; Temp, 1971; Vars & Bowen, 1998). Indeed, contrary to popular opinion, over-prediction (performing worse) is the most consistent occurrence in Black predictive validity studies, and few cogent explanations have been offered.
"Anonymous" Gringo. Software erased my name.
ReplyDeleteMy explanation for the less clear African-american correlation is related to what subjects of study minority students (and to a lesser extent, females) prefer. Affirmative action provides some advantage in some fields, but it is a disadvantage in STEM, because of Mismatch.
ReplyDeleteT99 - horsepower is a good metaphor. It's not a whole car, doesn't tell you anything about handling, style, braking, mileage...but it is still a valuable measurement for one particular aspect of the car's performance.
Yes, and "horsepower vs. torque" debates among engine guys are roughly equivalent to the "IQ vs 'Something we'd prefer to measure'" discussions.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that some of the only people who understood my research, even though some of it didn't agree, were Mensa and higher level members of IQ societies. Of course, that doesn't mean they are always accurate.
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned before, Mensa and Prometheus IQs are merely slightly above average to my standard scale. It is insufficient to compare against quantum parallel processing and divine channels.
Asians have had epigenetic success due to thousands of years of literacy and the visual linguistics learning process of the State examinations. To become a bureaucrat, you needed a test score.
Mensa and Prometheus level IQ standardizations, of 98% and above, and 99.9x whatever or higher percentile, only measures their single core processing speed. To use a metaphor and parable, a computer with 8 octet cores will compute things more quickly and effectively than a computer with 1 core, even if that 1 core is faster than the 8 cores all added together.
ReplyDeleteMensa has extraordinary processing speed for their members, and more of a balanced eccentricity list than Einstein or Prometheus put together.
A quantum computer, however, functions differently. There's a reason why bio science protein sequencers use humans instead of computers to do pattern analysis.
My own view is that IQ is not a bad measurement of what kind of student an elite university would like to attract. But shoot, if universities decide they want something else, it's none of my business. I'd just like to see a little clarity of thought here. IQ obviously measures something with strong predictive powers. If we're no longer interested in the things it predicts, by all means let's quit obsessing on it, and figure out what we'd rather focus on instead. Surely we can do that without beginning to lie to ourselves and each other about what IQ is and how we measure it.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, IQ isn't something that can be redistributed by fiat, though I know many would like to try.
Now that there are on-line universities, we can open the doors of all universities to all comers and simple see which ones can absorb the information, without blowing any budgets. Suits me, as long as we don't have to start lying about who's actually managing to absorb the information.
IQ is a measure of a human's rpg stat based single core processing ability to retain knowledge and to grasp and manipulate geometries and logic in their head. Some spirits chose an inarnation with a higher lineage and ability at IQ. And IQ is standardized. Meaning, it is based on the percentile of the Race. If the Race gets dumber or smarter, you will get the same IQ number, but the actual abilities have been changed.
ReplyDeleteMensa and Prometheus societies have done adequate manipulations and explanations of statistical percentiles and standardizations. But the masses who do not understand how IQ numbers are standardized... would be best to just take the ASVAB for their IQ test instead.
As the Sat Yuga new Age dawns after 2012 or 2010 (I started picking up new signals and channels in 2007, but that was just me apparently), human biological intelligence wil ltake a back seat to quantum, multidimensional processing, and spiritual intelligence.
ReplyDeletePeople haveh eard of gut instinct/intuition vs street smarts vs logic/rationality.
If people do not understand what I am talking about, even when their IQ is statistically higher than 99.9999% of the Human Race.... that does not mean I am superior to them in IQ. It just means I am not playing their Box game. It is an advantage and flank edge outside of the Box game.
For our might is not your might, our ways are not your ways.
ReplyDelete8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55.
Notice that this was Spirit talking to Isaiah talking to a bunch of ignorant sheep or primitive humans. That was how they explained it in Hebrew which is now translated to English. But we have the same situation up above. It is the exact same situation, yet people think the Words of a God comes from the writings of human translators and corrupt boys and girls. Heh.
A Ph.D or a Mensa or a Prometheus society member is "barely slightly above average to me" at best. At worst, they are 4 year olds. Their capabilities cannot compare.
Most universities would be unqualified to teach 6 year olds, by my standards. It is not that my standards are high, they are just different.
ReplyDeleteI am not worried about universities failing. They should fail and soon.
It does not concern me because 1. the world is going to change or Burn, same thing. Notre burned and changed. California was burning although change is slow. The world itself will burn and then be frozen as the temperatures decrease. What does it matter if humans can sustain their broken university systems for a few more decades?
The next generation do not need education standardized or state indoctrination any more.
The children will remember knowledge. They will remember how to walk, not learn how to walk, before they are 12 months, 6 months, or even 4 months old. This is remembering the truth, not learning state and traditional cultural indoctrinatiosn that came about because mother told mother told mother told mother told son.