subjective/objective are probably not the right adjectives here, but to use your example I would say that a timed foot race is an objective measure of how well you do in timed foot races, but is not an objective measure of your innate athletic ability because of training/coaching and you have to factor those to attempt to back into physical ability. the same is true for the SAT, in that people treat it like an intelligence/general knowledge test when you have to factor in the specific training that person has had for the SAT itself.

A timed foot race is a quite reasonable measurement of athletic capability - like, it's not a perfect one and a more thorough and diverse evaluation would be better, but if you don't have a better evaluation option then it's obvious that it has some information; if you'd take a hundred random people and split them into two halves based on foot race times, then that would be a far better separation than one based on randomness or any factors that measure athleticness even less.

I mean, it's okay to use the best imperfect metric you have available; so acknowledging "the metric is not fully correlated and depends on other factors" does not mean anything, the only argument that has weight is "hey, this other metric has better correlation with The True Thing and less bias, use that instead"; if the remaining alternative metrics are even less objective and more biased than SAT/ACT tests (which IMHO is the case), then removing SAT tests won't and can't improve things, despite these tests being flawed.

that would work if you were talking about random people who were selected to do a surprise track race, but if the track race is known to be THE measure and that can be influenced by training then you’re going to see skew.

to be clear, i still think the sat is better than everything else because preparation is much more legible and accessible compared to all of the other ways to stand out for college applications.

So what do you propose is more objective (or whatever qualifier you prefer) than the SAT?

Pointing out shortcomings of standardized tests is one thing. Advocating for eliminating what seems to be our most equal/standardized/objective/whatever measurement without a replacement seems like a bad idea to me.

if you read my first comment i never argued for getting rid of the sat, though they should get rid of the usurious prices for tests and sending your scores out. in fact, i argued that of all the subjective tests the sat has the most legible and accessible path to maximizing your score compared to all the other subjective things colleges look at.

Not really about SATs, but about a different direction to take the concept of college and higher education.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidie...

That's an interesting read, and I personally am a fan of Scott's somewhat radical views on college education in America, but surely you recognize that you are directly side-stepping the question? The problem at hand here is not about "how to decide who to get into undergrad", it's "how to decide who to train for the 'elite' jobs in society".