A higher score on SAT than your 5k time

Must be a high proportion of smart and fast people on Letsrun.

A 1500 SAT is about in the 98th percentile. And if you're counting high school 5K PRs, well only a handful a year actually do that. Very few chances to do that other than XC, and seriously how many high school sub 15 XC times are there a year? How many on the track? Roads?

Maybe 10 to 20 high school kids actually do run under 15 in a given year (although those capable probably into the 100s or more, if you consider that a 9:20 3200 is close to equivalent for 15 flat for 5K).

Of those, what percentage could score 1500 on SATs. Even with a higher proportion of smart students who are runners (doubtful if you read Letsrun for more than 5 minutes), you might not get more than 10% or 15% of the top runners scoring that high (and that's being very optimistic).

Likewise, how many 15:30 high school runners are going to score 1530 (or 1550 if you're going by numbers) on SATs?

A pretty rare double, no doubt it happens but probaby not more than a few dozen student-athletes a year.

**********************

High school:

SAT - 1050 (old school)

5K - 19:40

Post grad:

GRE - 1290 (1960 with analytical)

5K - 15:15

I still think you need to go with the weighted IQ (or time).

151 = 1:30.3

I agree what makes this thread even better is there are a bunch of people that I bet are close. So just bumping that 5k time down a little and the SAT up a bit and you got it. There probably are quite a few people each year that are even capable of it but I doubt it has happened very much at all.

I mean probably in the delusional posters mind they justify it saying I am sure I was capable of that time and/or score. Hey we all do it. It is just so funny because this has to be about the perfect storm for this. I mean high school 5k and SAT. Come on people just because you think you could have done it is not the same as having done it.

A really tough one would bean 8k time faster than the new SAT (out of 2400). I wonder if anyone has ever done that. I think I've come closer than most but no cigar. Then again, you can find a short course just about anywhere if you really want.

On the original challenge, I also hit that double in HS. Chalk up another liar for the thread.

I'm not saying everyone is lying, and indeed I wouldn't doubt that successful runners are also more likely than most to be successful students. However, the sheer number of scores in the 1500s and 1400s on this thread is unbelievable. I scored 1470 (reading + math sections of new SAT), which was equivalent to or better than my PSAT score, which got me national merit semi-finalist. That means I'll get a full ride to any school in my state and am in the top 1% in the nation. Compared to posts on this thread, though, I feel dumb! My score would probably be below the average of those listed here. And yes, I do agree with the point someone made about non-response statistical bias, but I don't think that's quite enough to account for the extreme seen in this thread.

Only 10 posters have said that they have done it. 11 if you count the guy who says he ran 13:20, who I think was joking. That's not many.

Remember 2 out of every 100 people scored 1450 or above. If you have 500 guys who ran 15 flat sometime in their lives posting on these boards, that's enough to account for 10 who have SATs in the range that we've seen here.

A Skeptic wrote:

I'm not saying everyone is lying, and indeed I wouldn't doubt that successful runners are also more likely than most to be successful students. However, the sheer number of scores in the 1500s and 1400s on this thread is unbelievable. I scored 1470 (reading + math sections of new SAT), which was equivalent to or better than my PSAT score, which got me national merit semi-finalist. That means I'll get a full ride to any school in my state and am in the top 1% in the nation. Compared to posts on this thread, though, I feel dumb! My score would probably be below the average of those listed here. And yes, I do agree with the point someone made about non-response statistical bias, but I don't think that's quite enough to account for the extreme seen in this thread.

There aren't that many people saying they did it on here (maybe 50?) and a lot of those are using a post high school 5k time (and said so). I'll bet there are only about 10-20 people claiming that they did it in high school.

Now considering that something like 1.2 million kids take the SAT every year (half of whom could have done this), that a lot of people run XC, that there is a correlation between minor-sport prowess and academic achievement, and that there are probably 50 years of people that could have done this, I don't think 10-20, who happen to be on LRC in the past few days, is THAT many.

with your reasoning I take it you were not one of the ones who achieved the double.

como say what wrote:

with your reasoning I take it you were not one of the ones who achieved the double.

No, I was not. What was wrong with my argument? I know it isn't particularly rigorous; my point was just that there are potentially a fairly large number of people who did it over the years. Do you disagree?

Your argument was fine; he is having problems reading the presented data. I just counted, and there were only 4 people who claimed to do this in high school on this thread, and one of these was clearly joking. Everybody else, which is also a fairly small number of people, is counting college times and occasionally conversions on top of that. Three out of everybody who replied is a reasonable number given the huge selection bias of a thread like this.

You guys are nerds.

a few dozen is a lot wrote:

A really tough one would bean 8k time faster than the new SAT (out of 2400). I wonder if anyone has ever done that. I think I've come closer than most but no cigar. Then again, you can find a short course just about anywhere if you really want.

I already posted about this a page or 2 ago. I think Derrick has done it- he was somewhere in the 2300s as I recall. Doubt anyone else has though.

This is a good one for me

SAT: 1600

5k: 15:05

Hopefully it bodes well for my real goal: an olympic trials marathon qualifier and a tenured faculty position

1600 SAT, 13:28 5K time trail by myself

This whole discussion has omitted girls, who are obviously not realistically capable of this double -- removing them gives you only 1/2 the test-taking population to work with.

I feel that the running component is much more difficult. I went to an Ivy League school, where I knew a ton of people with 1600 SATs (I would guess that 40-50% of my college class scored over 1500). Meanwhile, going under 16 in the 5K is very difficult -- in my > million population county, there were 2-3 XC runners my year that did it in XC. Track was a different story -- we had ~10 guys under 10 in the 2-mile, which should be close in endurance terms. My guess is that 50 boys/year achieve this double.

1600 SAT

16:42 5K (9:53 3200)

I find this discussion interesting as one who does not come near to accomplishing the goal. SAT (taken in 1968) of 1335. (I understand that that score would be worth about 1400 on today's test.) No HS 5K time. We only ran two miles back then.

High School

SAT: 1590

5k: over 20:00 (but I don't remember exactly)

College

GRE: 1600

5000: 15:21

Also, since a lot of people think the posters are lying, I'll prove I did the college version.

You can find my 5000 result here:

http://www.clusports.com/stats/track_and_field/2008/0503SSIM.html

My name is "Mark Eichenlaub". I ran 15:21.11

Here is a copy of my GRE score report:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1377494/scoreReport.pdf

Barely made it:

14:17

1420

Keep in mind that the 5k PR was set about 17 or 18 years after my SAT test!!!