No high school kids (other than the scientifically oriented) would have done even as well as I “even back in the day”. And my score was not impressive 37-50. They might have remembered the difference between a watt and a joule for about a month. Or fluorine vs bromine. Even in the 60s (and I was well taught in the sciences, enough to make my living in labs on occasion) a lot of this was not taught except in the advanced courses.
In those days Earth Science was about as far as science was taught to the typical student, along with algebra. Today’s better public schools teach adv. physics and chemistry, adv. calculus and adv. statistics. Way beyond what we had available. I never had any calculus until college.
I also managed 37 out of 50, but felt I should have gotten a few more right. There was only three questions I got wrong where the right answer wasn’t my 2nd choice (except for the one where I clicked the wrong button and hit enter before I realized I had messed up).
One question I only got right because I watched the movie “Twilight”. Another answer was easy because of the movie “2001”.
And I got the history questions wrong, not knowing the name of scientists or what started genetics.
Most embarrassing was screwing up Bernoulli’s principle because I didn’t look at all the choices before answering.
I think I would have done better if the web page wasn’t so tedius, I got to where I was trying to rush through just to get done.
I’ll have to see if my daughter can do better, being as she just graduated high school. For being out 32 years and not working in a scientific field, I feel I did OK. I wish they told us what percentile we ended up in.