Ok, a test that splits between the top 0.01% and the top 1%. One student goes to national competitions, the other is merely a decent student at your local high school. The SAT lacks the granularity to distinguish between them.

My point was that there is likely diminishing likelihood that the a test with such granularity would return a meaningful score. One would need to include a both a wider and deeper set of subject matter that still conforms to the context of the test. Eventually such a test would pick out the best studiers of generalized aptitude tests. While studying for a test is useful in academia - it's not "The" skill.

It's much simpler to have a candidate include notable achievements on their CV including competitions and after-school programs. However, even here you'll find factors that don't correlate to future performance e.g. those with the means and desire to min-max a CV for college admittance ( A very important life skill ) may not be the best leaders, academics, or students.

While both of the above skills will be correlated to future performance there are almost certainly diminishing returns from selecting the top .1% according to a single dimension.

Curiously the list of fields medalists does not appear to contain a mathlete at present. Providing at least one datapoint that performance in math competitions may not be correlated to future (Academic) mathematics achievement.

I just included that to point out that there is a tangible difference at the high end, it’s not just “everyone getting 800 on the math SAT is similar in their mathematical ability”. Whether competition performance correlates to mathematical achievement in college later in life is unclear, although I do want to point out that many do end up becoming professors and such. Many of the rest don’t show up on the “math radar” because they major in computer science instead and get jobs in the industry.

Throughout my academic career, I've met quite a few brilliant mathematicians with no interest in such competitions. And quite a few "goes to competitions" folks with little interest in higher pursuits. Placing too much faith in any measure is fraught

I’m not saying it’s the only measure we should have. But in the context of the chain this was in I was feeling a sort of “does it really matter if we can separate these people” and I just wanted to illustrate that in actual competitions that discriminate to this level you get a meaningful difference out of it. Now, whether that is an effective indicator of success…I’m not completely sure. A lot of the math competition winners I know are doing startups and HFT, so there’s that.

> A lot of the math competition winners I know are doing startups and HFT, so there’s that.

That's in line with my experience, too. Selecting olympiads is a preference for highly competitive people. In math, at least, collaboration is much more important.

Most of 21st century Fields medal winners are IMO medalists, so that seems to contradict your hypothesis. Terence Tao, Venkatesh, Miryam were all famously young and/or good contestants.

It doesn't have to be the best, merely better than what is used now. And what is used now is some obfuscated proxies of socioeconomic status.

That’s because future career is mostly influenced by how much money your parents have.