[RUME] Verbal SAT better than Math SAT for research?

[Cathy Kessel]

David Leonard and Jiming Jiang have an article with scatterplots and  
"smoothed line comparisons" (I assume a sort of line of best fit) by  
gender that show SAT scores or SAT scores plus high school GPA  
plotted versus overall college GPA for various majors (unfortunately  
not math). The GPA is cumulative--it's whatever the student had upon  
graduation, withdrawal, or transfer from University of California at  
Berkeley. One of these scatterplots shows math SAT vs. English GPA.  
For each gender, "line of best fit" decreases slightly as GPA  
increases. Another shows verbal SAT versus physics GPA. That one  
doesn't have as many datapoints and is harder to characterize with  
one word (for males, it's V-shaped between 600 and 700; for females,  
it's more or less level there), but it wouldn't give me confidence  
that an increase in verbal SAT predicts an increase in physics GPA.

Of course, that doesn't say much about correlation between success in  
research and SAT--or GRE. One thing that seems important in research  
is being able to write--or to get someone to write for you. That may  
be less important in math (I can think of examples) than in some  
other fields.

Reference: Leonard, D. K., & Jiang, J. (1999). Gender bias and the  
college predictions of the SATs: A cry of despair. Research in Higher  
Education, 40(4), 375-407.

--Cathy


On Feb 28, 2006, at 9:22 AM, David Smith wrote:

> Anecdotal evidence:  A long time ago, I served a term as Director of
> Graduate Studies in the Duke Mathematics Department.  (I think this  
> was
> after Charles was one of our students, but maybe not long after.)  The
> conventional wisdom at the time was that verbal GRE (not SAT) was a
> better predictor of success in the PhD program than math GRE -- and we
> used that in making admissions decisions.  The problem with math  
> GRE was
> that it reflected the courses a student had taken as an  
> undergraduate --
> information we already had in greater detail on the transcript --
> whereas the verbal GRE apparently gave us greater insight into  
> whatever
> the skills are that makes one successful in mathematical research.  At
> the time, the PhD thesis was usually the student's very first  
> attempt at
> research -- that's probably less true now because of the proliferation
> of REU programs.
>
> I'm not aware that anyone ever attempted to document this conventional
> wisdom, but I certainly wasn't the only one who believed it.
>
>        David
>
> Ronald Ward wrote:
>
>
>> I read that, as well.  But it applied only to girls and was not  
>> concerned with predicting success in mathematical research but  
>> rather success in college math classes, if I remember correctly.    
>> If I look through the right box I can probably still find it  
>> buried somewhere!  :)
>>
>> Ron Ward
>> Western Washington University
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: Rume-bounces at betterfilecabinet.com on behalf of Charles Wells
>> Sent: Mon 2/27/2006 6:39 PM
>> To: Rume at betterfilecabinet.com
>> Subject: [RUME] Verbal SAT better than Math SAT for research?
>>
>>
>>
>> Some time in the 1990's I remember reading a report that said that a
>> high SAT verbal score was a better predictor of success in
>> mathematical research than the math score was.   I would appreciate
>> knowing where I could find out about this (or if I am dreaming).
>>
>> Charles Wells
>>
>>
>> professional website: http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/math/wells/home.html
>> personal website: http://www.abstractmath.org/Personal/index.html
>> genealogical website:
>> http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/w/e/l/Charles-Wells/
>> NE Ohio Sacred Harp website: http://www.abstractmath.org/fasola/ 
>> index.html
>>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> David A. Smith
>    www.math.duke.edu/~das
>    das at math.duke.edu
> Editor Emeritus, Journal of Online Mathematics and its Applications
>    www.joma.org
> President, Durham affiliate of the
>    National Alliance for the Mentally Ill
>    bb.nami.org/cgi-bin/b.pl?reg=Durham&ST=nc&fn=read
> Voice: 919-489-5515, Fax: 919-660-2821
> Mail:  1408 Shepherd St., Durham NC 27707
>
>
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