If the SAT were a joke, you wouldn't expect scores to follow a bell curve with only ~0.3% of people getting a perfect score, but they do.
The SAT may not be good tests, but that fact has nothing to do with the presence or absence of a normal distribution.
OP's point was that the perfect scores remain consistently outside of people's grasp despite the variety of resources available to prep for the exam. I only once managed to hit perfect score and my other best scores were one or two questions off. I had been taking the test since I was 11 (for various extracurricular camps/activities) and prepped multiple times for them. The biggest scores jumps were more closely related with my age and academic achievements than anything else.
So the SATs are (almost certainly) 3-pl (actually 2) IRT models. Essentially, it's a multivariate generalised linear mixed model to estimate both question difficulty and participant ability.
Normally, they'll estimate the abilities on the logistic scale, and use the percentile to back transform to a standard normal.
Most people don't cluster at the top because they are a good proxy for g, which is an imaginary statistical construct that we use to explain differences in school outcomes.
So I had a long digression here about the usefulness of penalties for guessing, but it turns out the SATs don't do that anymore, so wth?
(ETS invented IRT, that's why I'm pretty sure).
A poor smart student may have mastery of the material but their score will suffer if they don't know the tricks.
MIT is removing a test which rewards the wealthy and punishes the poor. That's good. But the other metrics that MIT currently use are more punishing to the poor, and more rewarding to the wealthy.
With the removal of this element, MIT is left relying on personal statements, recommendations, and the like. With those metrics as the targets, the kids of the wealthy will fund their child's various activities for the sake of giving them a better application.
I understand why the students do it, I don't understand why anyone would consider it a good system.
I'm not saying the poor aren't disadvantaged. It's just that the disadvantages are more along the lines of attitudes towards education in the first place (along with everything else). There are also fewer people nearby that serve as an "example" on how to learn or get ahead.
84% of teens have smartphones in the US. A large percentage of that remaining 16% have access to internet at school, as 98% of schools have broadband internet.
I understand and appreciate my school was statistically abnormal but that is exactly what happened. I graduated in a class 334 students and several achieved perfect scores. Perhaps more than a third of the students achieved greater than 1300 and greater than 20% achieved greater than 1400. This is when 1600 was the perfect score.
All these scores indicate is the degree of conditioning imposed upon a student. I know people want these tests to mean something more for personal reasons, but according to all available data this is biased wishful thinking. The research on standardized convergent testing indicates it is not a measure of academic success or potential, but rather an indicator/discriminator of class distinctions due to availability of preparation.
Because I did not come from well groomed pedigree, did not value the subculture of excess vanity, and came from a family that was lower positioned financially I deliberately inverted the goals for a personal social experiment. I wanted to see how close to the bottom I could get and still graduate on time. This was exciting because the risks were greater. If you fail to estimate the conditions correctly you don’t graduate whereas other people get a slightly lower test score or grade point average. Because the goals were different you had plan and weigh the conditions in unexpected ways. Even with all the effort I put in there were still 5 people who graduated with a lower class rank than me.
What impact did that have in later life? I did not get a free ride to an Ivy League school like many of my classmates, enter corporate management immediately out of college, or become a corporate executive within 10 years. I did enter and graduate college. I became a self taught software developer without much challenge and have found very low resistance attaining employment as a senior developer in my full time job. I also became a managing principal in my part time job without as much effort. The greatest tragedy in all this isn’t lost status or earning potential but how boring life has turned out.