Yes, this is the question on the 'minds' of today's colleges. Is this 'person' smarter than a slab of baked clay? Well, when in doubt, the wise folks in the admissions office ask the SAT.
The higher the Standard Achievement Test score, the smarter the student is. BUT! How much smarter than a brick? Ah, there's the rub.
If, for example, I get one point on a test, and brick gets zero points, am I an infinite times smarter than this brick? This is not much use. If I had doubled my score (That is, made a 2), I would still only be infinitely smarter than that brick.
This would be a sad state of affairs.
So-o-o... We need A Number Greater Than Zero. 400 is a fun number, and it is greater than zero. It's also as high as Stan could count before he got confused (He rounded up in the end). Don't worry about who Stan is. The brick is 400 smart. Now you can measure a students intelligence in relation to the brick.
It is generally accepted that a student can never be more than 4 times smarter than any given brick. Therefore, the SAT only needs to go up to 1600. (That's 4 times 400).
I personally am almost 3 times smarter than a brick. Made my parents proud, it did.
There are some obvious problems with the SAT. First of all, a brick will achieve the same score as a tree, star system, or dead fish. Most people would be offended that their pet aardvark would be considered, by the SAT, only as smart as a termite mound.
Even worse, this test does not take into account the aardvark's musical abilities, dancing skills, or verbose fluency in Esperanto. (This goes for any students with these abilities as well).
Needless to say, this system needs patching. Very few students ever achieve 1600, making them look stupid. The brick looks even worse.
The solution to this is to make a test that would test for a multitude of talents, such as Being an Integral Part of a Structurally Sound Building, Eating Ants, and Noding.
The name would have to be changed, of course. I suggest Specific Personal Understanding/Utility Field.