Psychologists find SAT tests to be strong indicator of general intelligence in a March 3, 2004 press release::

While the SAT is generally a good predictor of a student's performance in the first year of college, a new study from researchers at Case Western Reserve University finds that, more than anything else, the SAT is a measure of overall intelligence. Meredith C. Frey, a doctoral student in psychology, and Douglas K. Detterman, a professor of psychology, examined the relationship between SAT results and general cognitive ability in two studies. They believe the results of their study mean researchers can fairly accurately estimate a person's intelligence without administering a lengthy IQ test.

But is this SAT an IQ test? "It is in a sense an IQ test. The SAT and IQ test correlate very highly. Between the SAT and the IQ, they correlate almost as much as the SAT correlates with a second administration of the SAT, as much as it correlates with itself. So they're very similar tests in content." from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/test/views.html

"There has been much legal wrangling about the propriety of making consequential decisions about education (or indeed, life chances) on the basis of IQ scores.....Nevertheless, intelligence test(s)...have actually won the war. Many widely used scholastic measures are thinly disguised intelligence tests." (from his book Intelligence Reframed - click for more quotes)

"According to people in the field--especially if they're sort of letting their hair down--they will say the SAT is essentially an IQ test, particularly the verbal portion is essentially an IQ test. I want to step back a little from the idea that the IQ test is a scientific measurement of intelligence. From the beginning, IQ tests essentially traffic in vocabulary items: antonyms, analogies, reading comprehension, it's a test of vocabulary fluency and accomplishment. So, the premise of an IQ test is that it is the same thing as intelligence. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. It's measuring one specific thing. It's not a magical, mystical test. The SAT grew out of an IQ test and the verbal in particular takes the oldest chestnut IQ testing techniques and applies them to high school seniors. And you know very widely, including in the Bell Curve itself, the SAT verbal score is used as a proxy IQ score, or is used as interchangeable with IQ scores. It's the thing that--to the extent that there's a sort of secret about Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT, the secret is that at least the test makers there know that what they're doing is administering a mass IQ test but the organization's very invested in denying that." from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/interviews/lemann.html

1. Employers are asking job applicants for SAT scores. They are coming to realize that IQ accounts for up to 1/3 of an employee's success, and know that SAT scores are basically an intelligence measure.

2. A new SAT test is being developed that intends to measure more of what is taught in high schools, less of a person's IQ. This new test was urged by the president of the University of California system.

In a significant revision of what Jencks had found some 25 years earlier, the authors concluded that...a black man and a white man with comparable test scores can now expect almost comparable earnings.from http://www.prospect.org/print/V9/41/jencks-c.html

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