Mona Lisa said:
the peculiar thing was that back when we took SATs in the early 80s, the total score one got often correlated pretty accurately with their IQ score if divided by ten. So my 1160 was very similar to my IQ which was measured at about 116! I was definitely above average in intelligence and almost bright, though definitely not 'brilliant'. Most people at my school got SATs of between 850 and about 1100; I was just outside the main range in the bell curve at my school.
actually, i was re-thinking this, and i'm pretty sure the test wasn't designed with that conversion in mind because the test was designed so that the average student got around 1000 on it, which would correspond to an IQ of 100 by your conversion. however, since the self-selected group of kids who take the SAT are probably slightly smarter than the population as a whole, their IQ is probably slightly higher than 100.
....actually, now that i am thinking about it....consider the bell curve of IQ scores versus the percentiles of SAT scores (not sure whether SAT scores are normally distributed.) for example, in 2003, about 28% of kids scored 1150 or better on the SAT. however, only about 16% of the population should have IQ scores higher than 115. assuming that slightly smarter kids took the SAT, most likely the percent of kids with IQs higher than 115 taking the SAT is greater than 16%, but i think it's reasonable to assume it's probably not 28%.
also, i think the theory doesn't hold true at the high end (or the low end!) of the spectrum. for instance, 25% of my class at college scored a 1580 or better on their SATs, and i can tell you that 25% of my class does not have an IQ of 158 or better. of course, this is all confounded by test prep, too.
...anyway, thank you for giving me something to procrastinate with

...i have two papers to write for tomorrow
