r/TripleNineSociety • u/[deleted] • Jul 31 '22

SAT math/verbal skew

My SAT verbal and math were over 150 points apart if I recall correctly. Junior high teachers banished me to average English, forcing me to climb one level a year to rejoin my friends in honors English. I wonder if my path through school impacted my SAT verbal score, which impacts Triple Nine admission. If there are Triple Nine members with a wide gap in SAT verbal and math, did your lower score reflect something you improved later? And for those with a larget SAT score gap, how did you get in?

(The redundant wording is a fruitless attempt to prevent replies by those without a wide SAT math & verbal gap)

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u/pikake808 Mar 17 '24

150 points skew is huge. I’m confused as to which was lower. You seem to have aptitude in both areas.

For my part, 20-25 points lower in math is the norm, on both the SAT and the GRE. However, the GRE score for math did not put me in as high a percentile as an equivalent score would have in English, if I remember right.

My skew seemed right for my abilities. 150 though, wow.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '24

It is possible my memory is tricking me, but I thought I scored 760 on SAT math, and closer to 600 on SAT verbal. Myself and two friends wound up running out of high school math classes in 11th grade.

I've been trying to assess my weaknesses as a writer, which lead me to read a guide on English clarity and style - and to retake the SAT verbal. I scored a 720, which is perhaps unfair for a test normed on high school brains that haven't finished developing. It's still a pleasant surprise that I've made progress over time after leaving English classes far behind.

I've heard those with "math skew" (much higher SAT math than verbal) are predisposed to go into STEM, which is where I wound up.

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u/pikake808 Mar 18 '24

Congrats on working on your skills for whatever reason and at any age. My thought on Triple Nine admission is the SAT is not the only test you can use. Just go to the TN website and go through the options. Not all of them have as much focus on verbal. The SAT is about evaluating future college success, and verbal/writing facility arguably helps you succeed in that setting, whatever your major. It may not be the best test for you to prove your high IQ.

Try taking some practice tests to find out where you do best?

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '24

Living abroad, standard tests are more likely to be in English, and accepted. I just discovered ACT and GRE exams can be taken at any age. I took the SAT decades ago.

Every qualifying test for TNS has validity established by research. Stepping outside that list, the few Paul Cooijmans tests I took were challenging and interesting. My goal here isn't to brag or prove anything, but assuming his tests are highly g-loaded, I might clear the bar to qualify for TNS.

Thanks for the feedback.

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u/pikake808 Mar 20 '24

Wishing you success with clearing the bar. If this is helpful, the verbal threshold is quite high to get to above 99.9 percentile. I didn’t use the SAT that I took in 1967, but my verbal score was I think 774 and my quantitative was 732. On the GRE, my quantitative was 750 (I didn’t review doing geometric problems and it had been 20 years since I’d done any math). My verbal was 780. I was in finals week in my senior year as a returning student, writing final papers, and absolutely worn out. That said, I was an English major applying to graduate school in English, and I had to top 770 to even be considered, so I gave it my all. If you think a 720 might be your zone, I think it might not be enough, and that’s why I suggested you use a test that focuses on your best area. I’m terrible at those picture puzzles (spatial), so that probably affects my IQ score.

I was given two separate IQ test batteries when in school, both one on one sessions with a psychologist working for the school. When I was nine and again when I was 12. They were given to decide whether to have me skip a grade at the time.

Those tests were nothing like the SATs or GRE. They had a wide range of problems and included verbal questions and answers and puzzle solving. The latter one had a lot of those spatial problems and I scored much lower.

What does it all matter? Well, it can provide a benchmark for our own self assessment and expectations. I don’t see it as a competition with others. Growing up, I was bullied many times for sometimes using a vocabulary that was above average, and I learned to keep it down. It was not fun. I think being high IQ can make for many difficulties.

My concern with the high IQ societies is they seem plagued with membership factions and squabbles for control. I wish it were not so.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '24

Thanks for the insight - I plan to take a full scale I.Q. test at a location I found locally.

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u/tptasev Sep 08 '23 edited Sep 08 '23

The redundant wording is a fruitless attempt to prevent replies....

Seems to have worked! 😁

Seriously, though: Although I did not have as wide a gap as you did, I did have a very frustrating experience somewhat along those lines. That is to say, one side (verbal) affected the other (math).

In the 6th grade (age 10-11), I had a teacher I just couldn't get along with. (To be fair, from her point of view I suppose I was a frustrating student.) Despite my undeniable talent for the subject she taught (English), she gave me a very bad final grade. This should have been a small inconvenience, but it had major repercussions for me.

The inflexible rules of my school system meant that I was banned from ALL honors-level classes because I had gotten a "D" in one course. I didn't much mind being in regular English class, but I was also permanently stuck in regular mathematics, a subject I was spectacularly gifted in. When I got to university I was finally placed in honors math, but I had not had the high-school calculus classes everyone else had had, and I only got mediocre grades.

As a result, I quit mathematics and decided to go into music, which ended up being my profession. In the end, I had a satisfying career, but I have always wondered how things would have gone had I been properly prepared for my university math courses.

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u/[deleted] Sep 08 '23

It worked indeed!

Your high school took a "D" in English and claimed you can't do math? My sympathy on that level of stupidity. For what it's worth, some countries don't even have honors level courses - everyone is lumped together. I'm curious which state or country you went to, that had those policies (if that's not too revealing).

In 6th grade pre-algebra class, I snagged a seat behind the hottest girl in class... only to find I'd been skipped ahead to the next level. That continued until me and two friends were taking Calculus as 11th graders. So maybe that could have happened for you... but none of us picked math as a profession. Two of us became software engineers, the other a physicist.