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Comment by buildsjets | Hacker News Reader

You cannot use the SAT as a metric to compare different cohorts. SAT scoring has been revised many times over the years. When I took it the highest possible score was 1600. From 2004 through 2016 the highest score was 2400. Now it is back to 1600 again. Plus, both the content and the format of the exam has changed many times over the years. At times, there was no essay requirement, at times the essay was required, and at times it was optional. Hence, each year the examination produces a different distribution/histogram of scores even if you normalize the 1600 vs 2400 difference.

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The scores have changed, but ideally they are asking for the percentiles. Those are scaled to the current year.

Even the scaled score is not that informative (and perhaps crosses the line on age discrimination) because for older workers the population of people taking the SAT was much smaller as a percentage of high school grads (and presumably weighted towards higher IQs). It's also why there were so many fewer perfect SAT scores -- smaller population in the bell curve.

Number of perfect scores is also affected by the increase in the number of students who spend 20 hours each a week or more doing SAT prep.

Yeah, test prep was considered more for people who were worried about low scores. 1500 vs 1600 wouldn't make much difference in college admissions at that point.

I somehow doubt that the people that would ask for SAT scores would actually be the sort to think about how those numbers should most effectively be used.

Paid test prep is generally considered to be more effective on the current SAT than it was several years ago which also makes it harder to compare across years.

Don’t make stuff up to defend this practice. The original poster only said the employer asked for the score, not the percentile.

> When I took it the highest possible score was 1600. From 2004 through 2016 the highest score was 2400. Now it is back to 1600 again.

that's because the 2400 score included an 800 point writing component; the math and reading components remained scored at 800 points (and still do now)

Even during that time the writing component was optional. I took it twice, once with and once without.

You can look at historical percentile by year and score though.

Which requires them to explicitly ask your age outside the bounds of qualification for a job (over 18 etc). Which ends up opening them to age discrimination lawsuits.

It does not require them to ask about your age, just the year in which you took the SAT. As other commenters have pointed out, this can range from 12 to 17.

Also, they could just ask for your SAT score and any relevant info (if you took it during COVID from your car, etc.) and then you could disclose whatever context you wanted.

That tells them everything they'd need to know to discriminate. If you took the SAT 40 years ago, it doesn't really matter if it was 42 or 47.

People are biased 25 vs. 55 not 33 vs. 34.

While I generally agree with you that employers should absolutely not be asking for this sort of information, they're still going to be able to make a very good guess at your general age by the dates of your education and employment.

Unfortunately, there isn't really a viable way to prevent employers from finding out your age from your resume/CV.

I don't kid myself into thinking that employers can't tell roughly how old applicants are. If they're asking for SAT they could also ask for college transcripts/graduation info. That's going to reveal the approximate age of many candidates right there. Finding out what year you took the SAT will add 0 info in most cases.

Yeah they’re much easier now.

When I took the digital SAT a couple years ago, we had access to the Desmos Graphing Calculator during the whole math section.

The entire point of the exam was to test whether you can read a math question, input it into the calculator and select the option that matches the result within 60 seconds. If you get a couple questions wrong, you drop hundreds of points. I don’t think it was a valuable test whatsoever (and of course, it biases to students who can afford time/money for thousands of practice questions to improve this “skill” through repetition)

The English reading/writing section was much more interesting, but again, the time limitations make it a skimming test more than anything else.

Many universities allow you to ‘superscore’ multiple attempts, to combine a math and RW score from different SATs. So again, scores bias towards students who can afford to take one test dedicated to math, and another dedicated to English.

Everything you’re saying makes me so mad

Got a source for that, bud?

Sure but if you also give the year they can work out the percentile for your cohort.

Although that probably also outs your company at risk for age discrimination.

But numbers are so easy to compare! Don't take this joy from HRs and recruiters!

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