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Comment by eunos | Hacker News Reader

And SAT as high school math exam itself I think is way too easy. They should design another test which can clearly distinguish top 1% or even 0.1%.from others

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When I was in high school in California more than 20 years ago, SAT math alone was insufficient for admissions to STEM programs at mid-ranked and top-ranked universities. I was required to take the SAT Math IIC subject test, which went up to pre-calculus. We were also strongly encouraged to take calculus in high school. There are two AP Calculus exams: AB (which covers the first semester of university calculus) and BC (which covers the first two semesters).

There are already such tests. They're called International ___ Olympiad.

Yes, the scores at the top are way too bunched. A perfect score should indicate generational genius, not the 100th smartest kid your year in California.

That's not a real problem for UC admissions. They accept thousands of students every year. Anyone who scores near perfect (within the margin of error) should be admitted to at least one UC campus. If that's not happening then the problem is with the admissions criteria, not with the SAT.

> Anyone who scores near perfect (within the margin of error) should be admitted to at least one UC campus

You really don't see a problem with that? Our best students should not be "admitted to at least one UC campus". They should have their pick of the UCs and should be getting generous scholarships to entice them. There is absolutely loads of bunching near the top the distribution which makes it impossible for actually-top students to differentiate themselves.

There's about 500k kids in California each year. The 100th smartest is undoubtedly smarter than you or me.

Probably. And they deserve to be able to prove it in a way that the current tests do not allow due to their low ceiling.

Yup. SAT is just a _bad_ test. It's way too easy to get top scores there, and the whole calculator section should be removed.

SAT also makes it easy to just mechanically grind it because the problems are so simple that you can just memorize their "shapes".

We need a test with a smaller number of tasks escalating in complexity. So that the top scores are extremely rare.

> They should design another test

Why? What would the point of this be beyond bragging rights?

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