Editing SAT (section)

=== Association with college or university majors and rankings ===
In 2010, physicists Stephen Hsu and James Schombert of the University of Oregon examined five years of student records at their school and discovered that the academic standing of students majoring in mathematics or physics (but not biology, English, sociology, or history) was strongly dependent on SAT mathematics scores. Students with SAT mathematics scores below 600 were highly unlikely to excel as a mathematics or physics major. Nevertheless, they found no such patterns between the SAT verbal, or combined SAT verbal and mathematics and the other aforementioned subjects.<ref>{{cite arXiv|eprint=1011.0663|first1=Stephen|last1=Hsu|first2=James|last2=Shombert|title=Nonlinear Psychometric Thresholds for Physics and Mathematics|date=November 2010|pages=|class=physics.ed-ph}}</ref><ref name="Wai-2015">{{Cite news|last=Wai|first=Jonathan|date=February 3, 2015|title=Your college major is a pretty good indication of how smart you are|work=Quartz|url=http://qz.com/334926/your-college-major-is-a-pretty-good-indication-of-how-smart-you-are/|url-status=live|access-date=January 30, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200116221413/http://qz.com/334926/your-college-major-is-a-pretty-good-indication-of-how-smart-you-are/|archive-date=January 16, 2020}}</ref>

In 2015, educational psychologist Jonathan Wai of Duke University analyzed average test scores from the [[Army General Classification Test]] in 1946 (10,000 students), the Selective Service College Qualification Test in 1952 (38,420), [[Project Talent]] in the early 1970s (400,000), the [[Graduate Record Examinations|Graduate Record Examination]] between 2002 and 2005 (over 1.2 million), and the SAT Math and Verbal in 2014 (1.6 million). Wai identified one consistent pattern: those with the highest test scores tended to pick the physical sciences and engineering as their majors while those with the lowest were more likely to choose education and agriculture. (See figure below.)<ref name="Wai-2015"/><ref>{{Cite news|last=Crew|first=Bec|date=February 16, 2015|title=Your College Major Can Be a Pretty Good Indication of How Smart You Are|work=Science Magazine|department=Humans|url=https://www.sciencealert.com/your-college-major-can-be-a-pretty-good-indication-of-how-smart-you-are|access-date=January 30, 2021|archive-date=February 6, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206080645/https://www.sciencealert.com/your-college-major-can-be-a-pretty-good-indication-of-how-smart-you-are|url-status=live}}</ref>[[File:Uni Major and SAT Averages.png|center]]A 2020 paper by Laura H. Gunn and her colleagues examining data from 1389 institutions across the United States unveiled strong positive correlations between the average SAT percentiles of incoming students and the shares of graduates majoring in STEM and the social sciences. On the other hand, they found negative correlations between the former and the shares of graduates in psychology, theology, law enforcement, recreation and fitness.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Gunn|first1=Laura H.|last2=ter Horst|first2=Enrique|last3=Markossian|first3=Talar|last4=Molina|first4=German|date=May 13, 2020|title=Associations between majors of graduating seniors and average SATs of incoming students within higher education in the U.S.|pmc=7266786|journal=Heliyon|volume=6|issue=5|pages=e03956|doi=10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03956|doi-access=free |pmid=32514476|bibcode=2020Heliy...603956G }}</ref>

Various researchers have established that average SAT or ACT scores and college ranking in the ''U.S. News & World Report'' are highly correlated, almost 0.9.<ref name="Frey-2019">{{Cite journal|last=Frey|first=Meredith C.|date=December 2019|title=What We Know, Are Still Getting Wrong, and Have Yet to Learn about the Relationships among the SAT, Intelligence and Achievement|pmc=6963451|journal=Journal of Intelligence|volume=7|issue=4|pages=26|doi=10.3390/jintelligence7040026|pmid=31810191|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Wai|first1=Jonathan|last2=Brown|first2=Matt I.|last3=Chabris|first3=Christopher F.|date=2018|title=Using Standardized Test Scores to Include General Cognitive Ability in Education Research and Policy|journal=Journal of Intelligence|volume=6|issue=3|pages=37|doi=10.3390/jintelligence6030037|pmid=31162464|pmc=6480800|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name="Wai-2019">{{Cite news|last1=Wai|first1=Jonathan|last2=Brown|first2=Matt|last3=Chabris|first3=Christopher|date=2019|title=No one likes the SAT. It's still the fairest thing about admissions.|newspaper=The Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/no-one-likes-the-sat-its-still-the-fairest-thing-about-admissions/2019/03/22/5fa67a16-4c00-11e9-b79a-961983b7e0cd_story.html|url-status=live|access-date=February 15, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201117190723/https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/no-one-likes-the-sat-its-still-the-fairest-thing-about-admissions/2019/03/22/5fa67a16-4c00-11e9-b79a-961983b7e0cd_story.html|archive-date=November 17, 2020}}</ref>{{Efn|Depending on the author, there might be a negative sign. This comes from the fact that the higher the rank, the smaller the number of that rank.|name=|group=}} Between the 1980s and the 2010s, the U.S. population grew while universities and colleges did not expand their capacities as substantially. As a result, admissions rates fell considerably, meaning it has become more difficult to get admitted to a school whose alumni include one's parents. On top of that, high-scoring students nowadays are much more likely to leave their hometowns in pursuit of higher education at prestigious institutions. Consequently, standardized tests, such as the SAT, are a more reliable measure of selectivity than admissions rates. Still, when Michael J. Petrilli and Pedro Enamorado analyzed the SAT composite scores (math and verbal) of incoming freshman classes of 1985 and 2016 of the top universities and liberal arts colleges in the United States, they found that the median scores of new students increased by 93 points for their sample, from 1216 to 1309. In particular, fourteen institutions saw an increase of at least 150 points, including the University of Notre-Dame (from 1290 to 1440, or 150 points) and Elon College (from 952 to 1192, or 240 points).<ref>{{Cite news|last1=Petrilli|first1=Michael J.|last2=Enamorado|first2=Pedro|date=March 24, 2020|title=Yes, It Really Is Harder to Get into Highly Selective Colleges Today|work=Education Next|url=https://www.educationnext.org/yes-it-really-is-harder-to-get-into-highly-selective-colleges-today-comparison-sat-scores-over-time/|url-status=live|access-date=February 19, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201024195730/https://www.educationnext.org/yes-it-really-is-harder-to-get-into-highly-selective-colleges-today-comparison-sat-scores-over-time/|archive-date=October 24, 2020}}</ref>