On February 2nd, Professor Blum lectured about the Progressive Age, a time of societal progression including the establishment of organizations and institutions in order to prepare for career fields such as law and medical.  Specifically, during this time period, the rise of colleges was imminent and in 1901, the College Examination Board was established.  This board would go to find the first standardized test, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in 1926.

About a week later, as I was sitting in Stats 119 A, the teaching assistant began to talk about the difference in score value from when the SAT was first administered to the value today (we later found the z-scores for two scores given and found that an the first SAT had more value for a certain score).  This got me thinking and since I had learned how the SAT was founded, I started wondering what the history of the evolution of the SAT was.

According to Petersons.com (2014), the SAT at first was a spin-off of the Army Alpha, which was the IQ test given to recruits to test their IQ.  Overall, the SAT has changed in the way it has been administered (time wise) and the way it is divided.  When first administered, the SAT was mainly a 315 question mathematical based standardized test with some language questions mixed in and had a 97 minute time limit.  Since then, the language questions have been growing to the point where to scoring scale was 1600 and then the essay was added in 2005 with a scoring scale of 2400.

As Professor Blum said himself: “We are haunted by history”.  There is a history to everything, even a pre-college aptitude test.