Why standardized tests aren’t an accurate reflection of intelligence

I never put much weight on standardized testing. It only tests one kind of intelligence, which is the ability to memorize things, and my memory was never very good. There are many different kinds of intelligence, so the SAT only gives a very limited and thus, often inaccurate picture of one’s overall intelligence. I value creative intelligence a lot more, and I always had more of that. Some of the most brilliant people I’ve met scored in the 1100s and 1200s on the SATs for that very reason.

There are many examples in history of people who either weren’t good at memorizing, or weren’t good at taking standardized tests because they limited their creativity. Einstein was one of them.

Some of my peers in college did much better than me on the SAT, yet I did better than them on my research projects and writing assignments.

I minored in cognitive science and have studied the brain a lot since college as well. One of the most important things I’ve learned is that no two brains are alike, and that it’s pretty much impossible to measure intelligence because there are many different kinds, and many different ways in which they can be manifested. For example, high-functioning autistic people are some of the smartest people in the world, but they often do terrible on standardized tests, because they can’t work that fast, or they don’t do well in stressful situations. For others, the focus on memorization limits them because memory and creativity compete for resources in the brain, and genetics often selects for one over the other for that reason. Having both takes up too many resources from an evolutionary perspective. I think that explains why I’ve always been a good writer, but have had a bad memory, at least when it comes to memorizing many things at once.

Let me sum it up this way: If I was the editor of a paper or prominent blog, and I was looking for a new writer, I wouldn’t ask to see their SAT score. I would refuse to look at it even if they offered to give it to me. Why? Because that would make me biased against them unnecessarily, for the reasons I described above. They could be a brilliant writer, yet have done average on the SAT. Instead, I would ask them for samples of their work, from years ago, and their most recent work. Their level of intelligence, and more importantly, their creative abilities, would be revealed far more by their work than by how they’ve done on standardized tests.