I also resonate with the idea that rewarding smart kids for being good at taking tests tends to undermine their work ethic and grit; when I finally got to math classes I couldn't just ace the test on, I had a very hard time; I truly didn't know how to buckle down, on my own, and do homework, because I'd never actually had to do that before.
On the other hand, when I'm hiring people, I've discovered I really do want to hire people who are able to ace simple math questions quickly. It's not sufficient, but it seems to be very correlated with being able to wrap your head around complicated code.
That doesn't mean tests don't work; if you wanted to, you could have found much harder ones. (That's what I did, out of necessity. They wouldn't have given my app a second look if I hadn't.)
I had a lackluster performance on the new writing section the first time around or I wouldn’t have spent any time upping the original 1520 or whatever.
The point is to brag a little yes because I really never get to tell that story now that I’m 30.
The point is that rewarding me for skipping class to smoke weed with my friends because I aced some test turned out to produce a university student who spent a lot of time partying.
I’ve changed a lot since then, and I do also have the blessing of being a rather natural and amiable person to talk too, but there was a long time where by sheer luck I was getting glided along because I ace tests like those and AP tests, but it certainly not indicative of someone who was going to spend a lot of time producing some great research paper in college or anything.
So I always thought it was kind of bullshit and I nailed the shit out of that test.
Probably just an imperfect science all in all. Much like hiring tech workers.
Edit: small grammatical errors, on a phone