Charles Murray thinks so. I don't have a strong opinion on it--I never took it.

This flurry of postings makes me think you can't quit blogging any time you like.

Good to have you back.

Sure I can. I just don't want to. I managed the four days off in Key West just fine. I never even went to a public terminal.

Yeah, but did you WANT to?

Yeah, but did you WANT to?

Take the SAT? Not at the time.

Oh, did I want to blog? A little, but not with any great urgency. I could obviously wait.

“… the UC study “

Being the product of the UC system I can promise you that any study on this subject by that system went in with a predetermined conclusion i.e. the SAT is worthless. The reason is simple; when the SAT is used to determine who gets admitted Hispanics and Black students are all but eliminated. I use “when” and “are” because the voters of the state of California decided to do just that sometime around 2000 and that was exactly what happened. The ultra liberal university administration spent the next few years tying themselves in knots trying to get around the voter mandate.

“… the UC study broke down its results … by freshman major (an A in a humanities course might not mean the same thing as an A in a physical science course). The results were unaffected”

I am familiar with the report he sites and I have strong suspicions that the statistical method used to come to these conclusions is wrong. I’ll suggest just one problem with the statement above. My advisor told me (when I was still there) that the average GPA for entering Mechanical Engineers was “4.1” (straight As and then some) the SAT average was over 1375 with a math average of about 750 and small standard deviation. In their report they found virtually no correlation between SAT and Freshman grades in engineering. What a shocker they couldn’t predict freshman grades from a group of nearly identical geniuses. Average SAT scores in majors like Hispanic studies or journalism are similarly low, and it wouldn’t matter anyway since no grades less than B are awarded in those type of majors, so again to way to predict.

Put a bunch of students with 800, 900, … and 1600 in the freshman physics curriculum (in the UC system) and the correlation would be so strong that you’d have to hire Michael Moore to make a movie to convince people otherwise.

Sorry for the essay, but this is just another infuriating example of people trying to pretend that everyone is equal. Nope, sorry some people are smart and some people are stupid, and sometimes it correlates to something that pisses liberals off.

i didn't agree with murray's article either, for reasons quite apart from the problems with his methodology (though those problems were also serious, of course). it should also be pointed out that murray isn't a liberal.

even if the statistics he cites were valid, murray utterly misinterprets them. i've written about it on my own blog at http://www.grammatix.com/keep-the-sat and i'd love to get comments on it if anybody's interested.

thanks, and keep up the good work.

I never took the SAT either. I went to community college instead.

Nope, sorry some people are smart and some people are stupid, and sometimes it correlates to something that pisses liberals off.

By the definition of liberal, liberals ∩ "PC police" is zero. That word does not mean what you think it means.

I think Murry has missed the strongest argument for elimination of the SAT. It will help get better athletes into the bigtime football schools. Once this is appreciated, I'm sure it will be a gonner.

brian d, I think you missed the point and much of the essence of Murray's essay. In the first place, it's worth pointing out that Murray is the furthest thing possible from a politically-correct multiple-intelligences 'every child can be above average' goofball. Quite the contrary. Your point that certain people, and even certain ethnic groups, have measurable and ineradicable differences in intellectual ability is one Murray has argued for twenty-odd years, at least.

More importantly, Murray's argument is a lot narrower than you suggest. He doesn't argue the uselessness of aptitude (or rather intelligence) tests in general, such as the SAT. Again, quite the contrary: Murray has always argued that an intelligence test is the only really reliable predictor of achievement in any intellectual or academic endeavor.

In this essay he merely argues that tests in a specific discipline, such as the achievement or "SAT II" tests, are just as good at measuring intelligence as the classic verbal-'n'-math SAT itself. That's all. He's just saying that a test of your achievement in chemistry or Latin ends up being as good a test of your general intelligence as the classic SAT -- provided, of course, that you have actually studied chemistry or Latin.

That's why Murray thinks the SAT could be replaced with achievement tests. As for why he thinks it should be -- that's a little harder to say. He spouts a lot of unconvincing eyewash about the harm done by certain social myths surrounding the SAT (harm which, uncharacteristically, he takes no pains to quantify and prove). My guess is that it's merely his personal grudge against a world, represented by the SAT "coaching" industry, which blithely continues to ignore the conclusion of his life's work, which is that the intelligence that lets you succeed at intellectual tasks is pretty much a genetic gift, and there isn't much you can do to change your allotment once you're born.

Some people are smarter than others. Some people are way better at math. Some people will never be engineers. Some people will never be great salesmen, for that matter.

But intelligence, whether "general" or "multiple" does not equate human worth. A man who can't do algebra but treats his wife and kids right is worth a 1000 of the opposite.

I think Charles Murray misses the point of having admissions testing. The purpose is not to be inclusive but exclusive. When you have more pegs than holes then you need a tool to dispose of pegs you don't want. Admissions officers have that tool with the SAT: a test that has no correlation with student achievement but can be used to justify rejecting an applicant.

I took the ACT - 21 composite score. That's the equivalent of an SAT score of 1500-1550 (modern SAT w/ writing test) or 1000-1050 (SAT prior to writing test addition). Score sucked because I made only a 13 on the History portion.