Everyone in school is practicing at least a bit on reading comprehension, and the SAT is across lots of schools, if you are the in 95%-ile of millions of people it might be more impressive than being in the 95%-ile of tens of thousands of people.
For me, I didn't have the desire or resources to do that. I got my 1400 and was able to choose from any of a dozen schools. That meant that being a white shoe attorney or McKinsey consultant was out of my reach. Life is good.
On another note, my son is passionate about little league. He's good, has fun, has a competitive spirit, has made great friends, etc. It's a great thing. He's probably in the 75th percentile of players at his age and region. So unfortunately, major league baseball dreams are unlikely to be fulfilled.
This article is similar. Being in the 95th percentile of people playing some video game is interesting, but isn't something that I would have any desire to do, and probably is a fools errand unless you're looking to compete at a professional level. I'd like to be in the 99th of people having fun playing a game -- the time and mechanics of getting to be an elite player is probably in opposition to that goal!
My understanding is that there is/was an admissions quota at the high school level. I don't recall the gory details, but as a cousin and friend I was sympathetic, but as someone not in the middle of it I was puzzled and kind of horrified at the brutal competition that left a truly brilliant person feeling like some sort of rube.
Everything worked out in the end.
1400 is still way above average, at least 95th percentile.
You can do whatever you want in both cases.
Seems recognized by everyone playing though. We focus little on who has talent. It's more about cool multi-player strategy, and funny stuff. Terrible players that "luck or effort" into something magnificent is way more exciting and celebrated than a known good player scoring/defending. "Goalie didn't show up and here's a dumbass in pads" are the best games, even if it's your goalkeeper and you get destroyed on the scoreboard.
SAT performance is (largely) determined by intelligence, which is (largely) innate. If you're relatively smart and don't practice at all, you will score higher on the SAT than your less smart friend no matter how long they practice.
This applies even more so to height.
With many learned skills, though, if you invest time and are thoughtful about how you approach your learning, you can get to 95th percentile fairly easily, despite that seeming quite impressive. Many participants don't put the time/effort in, and many of those who do don't do it in a remotely efficient way. If you do both, you are virtually guaranteed to get to a high percentile across a wide range of skills, mostly independent of your innate ability.
Top 1/20 Can be impressive or unimpressive depending on context.
Top 1/20 is impressive if everyone in the group is competitive. It’s not impressive if it’s 1/20 out of a bunch of randoms who’ve never tried to be good at it.
I'm not convinced. Many studies illustrate the correlation to success. We are still animals and not-merit factors still matter. Good looks, height, gender, race, symmetry, smell, whatever, etc, are a real "thing". You can overcome it all with mitigation, but it isn't imaginary. That stuff drives real outcomes.
Also, I have tall children and they are regularly treated as older than they are, setting expectations higher for them in settings outside of school where they aren't grouped by age.
So again, its all about the framing. If you just frame ir as taller is better, then ya, 95%-ile starts being impressive, but not as much as 96%-ile.
I had a 1500/1600 SAT and I was basically DOA.
I got into a top ten college with a 1470. it was fairly lopsided though (800 critical reading, 670 math; apparently the scores are reported differently now?), I dunno whether that helps or hurts.
ultimately this stuff doesn't matter as much as you might think. the state school I went to turned out to have good relationships with lots of software companies in the area. I ended up getting an internship that lead to a pretty good gig straight after graduation.
Is that excluded from the line of thought in the blog post because it's among "people who regularly practice?"
Or is it that effort vs ability thing? Not impressive because you were born smart?
In a totally "no effort" arena, 95th percentile height for a 19 year old US male is 6 feet, 2 inches. Does that feel unusual/impressive or "not that good?" I imagine it brings plenty of life benefits.