This matters more than the SAT
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One basic selling point of the SAT and ACT has always been that they are supposed to predict a student’s likely success in college, serving as a sort of audition for colleges (who have a vested interest in admitting students who will succeed).
The value of those traditional tests has been challenged on many grounds, including the idea that they carry a cultural bias. There has also been repeated research showing that high school grade point averages are actually better predictors of college success.
A major 2009 study by William Bowen, Matthew Chingos, and Michale McPherson and published by Princeton University looked at 150,000 students across almost 70 colleges and universities. It considered six year completion rates rather than just freshman year performance. The researchers found that compared to the SAT, high school GPA was 2.5 times more predictive of success at the most selective universities and 10 times more predictive at the least selective schools.
Objections to the SAT and ACT were put to the test in 2020, when COVID disrupted high schools across the country and colleges (including all 8 ivy league schools) dropped testing requirements for admission.
When it came to diversity, test-optional results were mixed. One study of Dartmouth College admissions found that high-achieving students from disadvantaged backgrounds improved their admission chances 2.4 times by reporting their scores. However, a study by the University of California, Davis, found that universities that eliminated standardized test requirements generally increased their diversity– unless the schools were facing financial issues or continued to emphasize academic criteria.
By 2023, the testing optional tide was reversing, and many schools returned to standardized testing requirements. This provided researchers with a unique opportunity to compare results at the same school with and without the test optional approach.
A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research with lead author Theodore Joyce (Baruch College, CUNY Graduate Center) finds much the same results as the 2009 study. The researchers looked at both pre- and post-COVID cohorts, with a total of over 225,000 students followed. They looked at how well the groups did as freshmen, how many continued for a second year, and college graduation rates. Write the researchers, “Our results underscore the dominance of HSGPA [high school grade point average] as the most important predictor of student success at this public university system.” The paper is clear and direct in its concluding that “high school grades are a vastly superior predictor of student academic success than is the SAT.”
The implications are not just that colleges and universities should give more weight to GPAs than SAT scores. Too often students, parents, and schools worry more about getting into a college than about what the student will do once they are admitted.
If it is high school GPAs that best predict success for students in college, then it follows that the academic preparation behind that GPA best readies students for college completion. When parents spend thousands of dollars for SAT coaching, that is money that could be better spent on academic coaching. High schools should be reminding their students daily that it is their GPA that best predicts their readiness for college, and if college is their goal, then better results from high coursework should be their focus.
