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But... But.... But... There was a high school valedictorian who struggled in college.
@InformedConsent. Ivy colleges consider the graduating HS students and where they ended up. For instance, if they attended here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvar...nited%20States. like our DIL, you get why they take a strong look at that student when they have a high-class rank. After all, it's the 6th best-ranked private K-12 school in the USA. And that school is priced accordingly.
Plus, admissions look at their essays, what classes they took, etc. In your not-so-good example, OBVIOUSLY, that student who struggled in college math didn't have a fighting chance of getting into Harvard because they didn't take algebra in HS!
Per Wittgenstein's Ghost, you are misguided in your conclusion. I'm just a parent who's been through the Ivy application process. I'm not guessing. I groomed our kids to get great ACT which is used more in the Midwest. I hired tutors, had them take the test 15 times, etc. In our son's case, he struggled with taking the test fast enough. Solution: focus on fast deduction processes. With time and $$, his ACT score went up 7 points. All because my checkbook is thicker than other students. Hence, the policy change was to make the test "optional."
I'll bet the farm that nearly all applicants at Harvard, for instance, STILL submitted their ACT/SAT. @Wittgenstein's Ghost, do you happen to have that answer? Or putting it another way, how many people who declined to submit their ACT/SAT got in the best of the best colleges? I suspect it is going to be extremely low.
Plus, some top schools interview too. For instance, Stanford had an alumni interview with our son. He didn't get into Stanford or Harvard, but he did get into both for medical school (he chose Harvard.) And yes, they ARE looking for "diversity." Our white, straight, male son brought diversity to his medical school. "Diversity" can mean all kinds of things. Racking and staking SAT, MCAT, DAT, or LSAT, scores by themselves is IDIOTIC. That test score that you think is the litmus test for IQ has some major drawbacks. But it's been concluded it is still necessary. Hence, the policy changed back to mandatory testing for most of the best-ranked programs. All things being equal, even with its flaws, the standardized test helps.
Yes.
Standardized test scores are still the statistically best predictor of college success. Those who disagree are math deniers and focus on the exception to ignore the overwhelming rule.
Kids who do great on standardized tests are significantly more likely to, 1, get good grades in college, 2, not drop out so they graduate, 3, perform well on an IQ test, 4, perform better in a career once out of college.
There are exceptions, so it shouldn't be the end all be all. Many factors should rightly come in to play beyond testing, but they play an important role.
Admissions essays can be written by a friend.
GPAs have been inflated.
Etc. Standardized tests when written well is a good measuring stick from kid to kid.
@Mn-Born-n-Raised: Schools were less than forthcoming on these data precisely because they didn't like the perception that they were "test optional" yet heavily preferred having test scores (which they did). Some colleges released better data than others, but across the board, students who could submit even reasonably competive scores for a given college were more likely to get it. Sites like College Confidential would release some of this research when it came out, and I think they have a table somewhere comparing the acceptance rates for test vs. non-test kids at various schools.
This is assuming we are talking about mid-2021 and on, of course. The test optional movement happened due to Covid (not 2015 as the other user claimed....only small liberal arts schools were test optional prior to Covid). The big wave of schools with decent student body size going test-optional happened out of necessity. The SAT and ACT were cancelled for months during 2020. So the high school class of 2021 is a bit different....not having a test score in that class wasn't necessarily the same as not having one in the class of 2022 or 2023.
Interestingly, parents and students very quickly picked up on the fact that colleges were using the test optional thing to improve diversity numbers, and white and Asian students were still expected to submit scores for the most part. However, this led to a side effect (I'm tempted to call it an unforeseen consequence, but plenty of us in the industry saw it coming) whereby minority students weren't able to distinguish themselves clearly. If you're a 1500 black kid from a black school with a 4.0 unweighted GPA, how do you stand out from the 1200 black kid from a black school with a 4.0 unweighted GPA? One is Harvard material, the other is not.
This issue was at least a contributor in the reversal of test optional policies that we are seeing happen now. Research released in 2023, which featured two Harvard names on it, was a big impetus (you can read that research here: https://www.nber.org/papers/w31492). It showed that standardized tests can help close the class gap in selective college admissions. So while the usefulness of standardized tests in predicting college success was a big factor, there were other issues that were also pushing schools in that direction, and a big one was the inability to identify the truly bright kid from a less-advantaged background.
“Average” is a range, which is one standard deviation from the mean. Most IQ tests are normed to have an average range of 85-115. The difference between IQ scores of 100 and 98 is not noticable at all. As a matter of fact, the same person can take the same IQ test on two different days, and get 100 on one day, and 98 on another. The same person can take two different IQ tests, and the scatter between scores can be much greater.
Wouldn't it be reasonable to expect a fall in the general IQ level after the covid pandemic? Brain scans were done on individuals following covid where previous brain scans had been done and apparently, post covid patients appeared to have aged by ten years.
Yeah, a handful of geniuses is not going to compensate for millions of sub-80 IQ "migrants" pouring into the state.
Technology is the problem? lol Sure, that's it.
Once again, Idiocracy is proven to be a documentary.
The interactive map tells it all.
Dombrowski must have lived under a rock the last twenty years to be surpised by IQ scores dropping in California. It's not just who has flooded in but who has left en masse.
Dombrowski must have lived under a rock the last twenty years to be surpised by IQ scores dropping in California. It's not just who has flooded in but who has left en masse.
There's that too. The thought did cross my mind, which would actually make sense but there is also the consideration of the effects of wokeism which is not too far removed from the hive mind or borgism if you will.
Dombrowski must have lived under a rock the last twenty years to be surprised by IQ scores dropping in California. It's not just who has flooded in but who has left en masse.
"He (Dombrowski) compared it to the early 1900s, when people made incorrect assertions that the English were intellectually superior than Italians - simply because they scored higher on IQ tests.
But it was only because the Italians weren't fluent in English.
'That might be the case in California, which is really diverse [and has lots of non-English speakers],' Dombrowski said, 'but it's really difficult to disentangle.'
It's "difficult" because of according to the NYPost, "However, there was one area of the test that did increase, they noted, in the three-dimensional rotation score, which has to do with spatial reasoning" plus a host of other interesting correlations.
You cannot take a single study and assume it is accurate. For instance, the Post said this is the 1st time IQ results have dropped. Yet a Norway study showed IQ's have been "dropping for a few decades." See https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/13/healt...ntl/index.html
Next, the study also showed that those with less education in the 18 to 22 age group had the steepest decline while other groups had smaller declines. The entire reasoning for the decline is probably multi-variable. Hence, Dombrowski's POV said, "it's really difficult to disentangle." As in, the weighted average of reasons.
And remember, the people who are leaving CA en masse have someone buying their multi-million dollar homes. Therefore, the higher-performance brainpower that is exiting is being replaced by new high IQs. I know a lot of high-IQ people leaving CA, and a lot of them are entering. There is a lot of $$'s leaving CA. And rightly so.
I quoted it in my comment that you just quoted! Did you not read what I wrote?
And I disagreed with what you said. When colleges/universities eliminate the test score requirement, it's because they want to admit students who would NOT otherwise be competitive for admission because their test scores are too low. They WANT to admit a lower-caliber student body and not just smart kids in their pursuit of diversity and equity. They're admitting less intelligent students on purpose.
In the US, the average IQ is 98. Anything below that is below average.
That’s not really how we interpret IQ scores.
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For instance, if they attended here 
