What's wrong is that they're touted to measure your intellectual abilities. They don't, not comprehensively.
It's such a cliche, but the SAT really does measure how well you take the SAT. What does that mean? Well, it means that you don't really need to know how to solve all the problems if you practice and learn how to use the shortcuts and heuristics that enable you to pick the right answer even when you have no idea what you're doing. You take two people of comparable intelligence and give one a year of practice with SAT material (geometry, vocabulary, etc.) and the other a few actual SATs, and the latter will kick the ass of the former every time. You can see how this gives a natural advantage to certain cultural strata.
I got a 1600 and I had no fuckin' idea what any of the words meant in the analogies sections. But you learn to chop off two or three of the obviously wrong ones, and then you have a good guess from among the remaining options. People smarter than me without SAT Instinct die on the analogies.
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