Lowest Raw Score Ever on the SAT

An anonymous reader writes "Lowest Raw Score Ever on the SAT. Relax! You are practically guaranteed to have done better on the SAT than this guy! But the competition for most extreme negative raw score is just beginning..."

Comments

Top 2%

[Taral]

Is 1250 really a top 2%? There's something really disturbing about that...

(That's only about 2.5\sigma from the mean...)

Re:Top 2%

[ichimunki]

Sometimes makes you wonder if the large number of "2% smartest" people are related to the large number of people who think they are in the "top 5% wealthiest" category. :)

That said, our society doesn't generally deal well with extreme intelligence. As soon as it is realized that you score well on standardized tests (which is what these measures actually measure, not "intelligence"), there is extraordinary pressure not to "waste" that intelligence. It is usually assuming that a rigorous program of schooling-- and usually in schools controlled by people who are decidedly average intelligence-wise-- is the best course. This is probably a mistake.

Most schools are not designed to nurture independent learning (or thought, really). The medium is a large part of the message and that message is, "obey arbitrary authority, move around at the sound of the bell, you are smart enough to learn the world's history, physics, and advanced match, but you are not smart enough to manage your own time or decide who should teach you what."

Is it any wonder, then, that some of the nation's brightest stars get bored or upset or choose fairly antisocial ways of expressing themselves? The worst case is when those "smart" kids come from otherwise average families. Those parents may act like they've hit the lottery, or simply continue to apply pressure (apparently even subtle sticks are more common than any kind of carrot in these situations) to urge the kid to "use their full potential" or whatever. It's a bit like a gardener who would try to grow his plants faster by sitting in the garden and pulling on the tops of the plants.

Re:Top 2%

[PetWolverine]

I've witnessed two really smart people get totally tired of school and come close to flunking and not graduating from high school. They were me and my brother.

The odd thing, from my perspective, is that most of my friends get along just fine. I tend to consort with people about as smart as I am (146 IQ, 36 ACT, 1490 SAT, if you think standardized tests have much to do with intelligence), and they don't have the problems I have. I think my failure, and my brother's before mine, has more to do with the type of habits we've learned from our parents than with our intelligence. My parents are both fairly anti-establishment, and have both made relatively successful careers despite (or in my dad's case, because of) that. They've taught my brother and me to hold similar views.

While I call them anti-establishment, I don't mean in a knee-jerk kind of way. There are elements in the System that my parents believe in, and there are elements that they don't believe in. They taught my brother and me to weigh the facts and decide for ourselves what we believe and how to behave because of it. Now, I can't vouch for my brother, but a big part of any explanation for my poor performance in high school isn't so much apathy for learning itself as for demonstrating that I've learned something. I love reading Shakespeare, but I'm not much for doing some silly homework assignment meant to prove to the teacher that I've done the reading. I read books about physics in my spare time, so why should I bother completing some little bit of physics homework? My biggest complaint is classes that grade based on attendance. Quote from my piano teacher this past semester: "I am sure this section was the only one you could fit into your schedule, but if you ever have a chance to take another class piano course, try to schedule for later time; so that your grade will reflect what you can on the keyboard [sic], not when you wake up." That was in an email informing me I had gotten a C in the course. Now, why should what time I wake up ever, ever affect my grade in a class? I obviously came to class enough that she knew I could play the instrument as well as...well, as well as a bassoon major can be expected to; why should I get a C because I didn't come any more often than that? And this is in college!

Too often, performance in school reflect not a person's ability, nor their commitment, nor anything else that's relevant, but instead their ability to get up in the morning, follow a set schedule, do what they're told, and not get into any trouble (since suspensions, at least at my former high school, count as unexcused absences which then affect a person's grade adversely).

Re:Bush

[Anonymous Coward]

George W. Bush got a verbal score of 566 and a math score of 640, for a combined score of 1206. According to this site, this means he has an IQ of approximately 129. This places him in the 97th percentile, assuming a normal gaussian distribution with mean 100 standard deviation of 15, or the 96th percentile, assuming a standard deviation of 16.

What does it measure though?

[GreggyBUIUC]

Scoring well on the SAT, or any other standardized test does little more than to prove that you can do well on standardized tests.

I'm in college now, and did relatively well on my SAT, but I'm a slacker... especially when it comes to academics. Just a plain lazy bastard.

The thing is that I had alot of friends who didn't do so well on the SAT, but they got into their undergrad school and worked their butt off and are now on their way to Med school. Now granted, in order to get into a good one, you still have to go through a nasty little M-CAT, something I know nothing about.

It seems though that something like the SAT shows little more than how you prepare for a very specific test and how you perform on a very specific day. What it shows to a lesser degree is your level of persistence, self discipline and perhaps most notably, your common sense. I have alot of friends who are going to be sucessful at what they do someday, but just don't do well sitting in a room answering multiple choice questions for three hours.

Perhaps this is why its a blessing that your standardized test scores are not the only critieria for admitance into higher learning institutions.

MCAS vs SAT

[Anonymous Coward]

On standardized testing being a joke: According to the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System for those of you outside of the state, a test that aims to determine graduation eligibility and falls...short.) I'm supposed to be *barely* average in math and below standard in english. SAT I Verbal : 800 (99%) SAT I Math : 790 (99%) SAT II Lit. : 770 (97%) SAT II Math IIC: 760 (81%) SAT II Math IC : 730 (93%) Currently, a rather frightening percentage of Mass. high school students are being denied their diplomas because of MCAS scores...and I picked up a total of some $100,000 per year in academic scholarships from six different colleges...and I'm currently getting $26,000/year from the one I chose to attend. The class one year before me had to pass the MCAS in order to graduate. Were it not for that one year...I might still be a high school senior. Standardized tests are a joke...and aren't really that funny.

My experience...

[crashnbur]

When taking the PSAT during my sophomore year in high school, I decided that the school didn't need to know my ethnic origin, whether the information was gathered for statistican purposes only or not. The choices were typical (White/Caucasian, Black/African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, etc...), and there was a seventh blank marked "Other", suggesting anyone of any ethnicity not listed to list their brand name. I thought I did a very noble thing for a white boy in urban central Georgia, and I checked the "Other" box and wrote in, "I'm human. What does it matter?"

The test proctor, a Geometry teacher, didn't like this very much and sent me to the principal's office. I gladly took my test answer sheet up to the principal's office and told them the story I wrote here. The principal took the answer sheet and showed it to a couple of people around the office, presumably to get second and third (reinforcing) opinions, and then returned the test sheet to me and told me to get back to class, finish the test, "and if she has any further problem with this, send her to me."

My first reaction was, whoa, "send her to you"?! I don't have that authority. She made me understand that I had done nothing wrong and should definitely not be punished for it. (To be honest, I do not remember if my main purpose was to be a smartass or to promote social colorblind-ness, but it shouldn't matter if anyone reads it properly.)

Anyway, the moral of this story is: if you let them get used to you simply falling into line and always doing the expected thing, you get locked into it. On the other hand, if you let them know you're just less than predictable, and perhaps even a bit crazy or eccentric, then you can get away with much more and even get them to think harder about things. I succeeded that day, and my ego swelled from that of a skinny, nerdy white boy into that of a taller, more confident, skinny, nerdy white boy. :-)


p.s.-- my favorite line from Colin Fahey's site:

So, in this latest experience, when I worked very hard to determine the correct answer for each question, and then proceeded to pick the exact WRONG answer (in fact, the most RIDICULOUS answer), I had a very strong emotional reaction. For a while I worried that this new peculiar feeling of freedom was in fact insanity; I was finally making the transition to madness.

Yeah, I feel that ALL the time. Marching to the beat of a different drum is liberating, but self-liberation is viewed as insanity until it catches on...

Re:My experience...

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be great if someone would take the test in 2005, and answer the essay question:

"I refuse to answer the essay portion of this test on the grounds that any answer I give will be judged subjectively and any grade not given by a machine is arbitrary. As proof I submit that if I were to grade my answer to this question, I would give myself full credit."

Re:Bush

[Zeinfeld]

Personally, for my choice as president, I'll rather have a man with an IQ of 129 that has excellent intrapersonal/leadership skills and the abillity (and humillity) to suround himself with advisors smarter than him over an egotistical "I'll do it all myself" type with an IQ of 180.

I would prefer an honest President to either. No IQ score that is above the mean has much significance and if you go more than an SD above the mean there is NO significance. IQ tests were developed to measure the progress of mental patients under various therapies. They were never designed as general purpose tests.

Stephen Jay Gould gives the definitive debunking of IQ tests in The Mismeasure of Man. There is a big history of junk science, mostly in the service of racist theories of eugenics. Lots of untested facts being repeated for decades etc.

One of the many IQ myths is that you can't improve your score with practice. That is absolute rubbish. I had to practice IQ tests every week when I was 10 to take the exam for the senior school. I ended up with perfect scores on the multiple choice questions for several weeks in a row.

Getting back to his fraudulency, the guy has no character and no honesty. He lied to sell his tax cut and he lied to get his war. He promised not to bust the budget and then did exactly that, he even lied about the alleged 'trifecta' of exclusions to his promise. He never told the US people that there were exceptions, it never appeared in any press release of speech. Not only is he a liar, it is a character issue, he is in effect saying 'I had my fingers crossed behind my back'.

Before Bush's war the justification given was scary weapons of mass destruction. After the 'proof' that nuclear material had been bought from Niger was shown to be a fraud he invades anyway (or at least orders the army to). Then afterwards the story changes 'oh it was just regime change all along'. I wonder what the story is going to be once the funddies elect an ayatollah.

I suspect that after he looses the 2004 election the aircraft carrier antics are going to be seen in a different light. He is campaigning on his national guard stint - risky at best when daddy pulled strings to get the place and especially so when you then went AWOL for a year.

It is really difficult after being lied to to believe anything the man says.

Closed Universe

[Lord Grey]

I thought this was one of the better comments in the article:

It is possible that people with the same subjective influences and implicit assumptions do well in college, because college faculty belong to the same dominant species of irrationality. So, the value of the verbal section of the SAT as a predictor of performance in college might be quite high. However, the side-effect of optimizing a test to better predict success in college is that truly objective minds might be punished for not keeping up with the latest delusions.

I've always felt that the U.S. education system "taught to itself," meaning that much of what you learned in school was directly relevant to school, but nowhere else. It's like the schools inhabit their own closed universe.

My 13 year-old son spends an inordinate amount of time in school studying and practicing for a thing called a TAKS test here in Texas. You have to pass it or you don't graduate to the next grade (that's the intention, anyway). What skill, exactly, is he learning? As far as I can tell, the skill is "how to take the TAKS test" -- something very useful in the post-school world, I'm sure.

Very frustrating, at times.