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EgregiousCubeyesterday at 10:04 PM5 repliesview on HN

"You're partly making your decision based on who someone was as a 17 year old."

Sure, but IQ tests show a high degree of stability over a person's life. It's not unreasonable to be interested in it for sorting.


Replies

prplyesterday at 10:16 PM

SAT isn’t an IQ test, and probably all sorts of people took it before they had cultural awareness or a diagnosis that would have lead to different testing conditions had it been taken after diagnosis, let alone the fact that test scores are not comparable.

GPAs similarly not comparable over large time ranges, schools, or degrees without normalization you can’t get.

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janalsncmyesterday at 10:06 PM

Can you say the same for SAT tests, where the score is best of N and N is however many the person can afford and varies between candidates?

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sdevonoesyesterday at 10:38 PM

I never done an iq test, but just curious, can’t one simply “rehearse/study” for such tests? I dunno, let’s say you do a few past IQ tests (with answers available), I guess one could get a higher score just by doing that

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quux0ryesterday at 10:22 PM

I dislike this argument. I think in some dimensions these types of tests can work, but I’ve never been the type of person who’s been able to score well, and I don’t test particularly well in general, yet I did my PhD work at <IVY LEAGUE> and have had a great career despite this. I think that testing is good for people who can be adequately evaluated, but for people like me it just leads to a lifetime of feeling like something’s wrong with you.

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nephihahayesterday at 10:25 PM

I can't speak for others here and we don't have SATs in this country, but these things can be very unfair. When I was seventeen, I had a lot of things to deal with which were not of my own making, such as caring for a terminally ill relative and wondering if I would even have a roof over my head a few months down the line. That kind of thing tends to take your mind off school work. Several years later and I was in a much better place.

I think it's fair enough to say teenagers in general have more instability in their life even without this.

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