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Comment by tekla | Hacker News Reader

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tekla·

The average for the SAT is 1050 https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/scores/what-scores-mean/wh...

I got a 1040 on the SAT in the 5th grade. The average score is useless for gauging how hard these exams are.

Bragging how you got a 34 on the ACT or 1450+ on the SAT for an elite college is like bragging about clubbing a seal

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What you're saying doesn't make any sense, do you just enjoy bragging? Hardness of a task only makes sense in the context of who is doing the task. The fact that you scored highly means it was not a hard test for you compared to the average test taker. I could not determine this without the average score.

The fact that the average score for Harvard and similar for other elite colleges for the ACT is 34-35 means that the national average is worthless for the purposes of elite colleges. Majority of people who would even bother to apply for them are basically perfect across the board grades wise, so its worthless to brag about it.

Bar making exams harder, the only other way is subjective methods. I detest subjective methods, but making exams harder is very unpopular

That's fair; I didn't realize you were only refering to the specific context of getting into a top-15 college.

They're not bragging. They're pointing out that the ceiling is dramatically too low, which has caused elite universities to spend decades creating more and more elaborate and more and more detached and meaningless gatekeeping mechanisms. The national average does not matter in the context of the nation's most competitive schools.

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