Perhaps, but what kind of aptitude does the SAT test for? IMO, it tests for an ability to answer relatively easy questions quickly (if they were hard or anything but superficial, you wouldn't be able to answer them in even a few minutes each, let alone <1 minute).

Sure, people with (near) perfect scores on the SAT may have aptitude for elite college work, but they aren't the only ones. Plus, given the way the test is scored, it isn't clear to me that anyone can even honestly discriminate between "aptitude" in students with scores between ~650 and 800.

I think that Deresciewicz was getting at this point: the admissions process at elite colleges selects for an overly narrow group of students, to the detriment of the students and the system as whole.