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Shocking that a “Scholastic Aptitude Test” or “American College Test” would predict future scholastic achievement at the collegiate level.
To measure academic achievement they use First Year GPA. It makes sense they're correlated, both require studying known material for a test. But is GPA the best measure, especially first year? I would be interested in other metrics like 3rd-4th year GPA or placements into jobs and such.
I agree. Every other comment here seems to be like "well duh" and I'm... skeptical. My experience is that the ACT/SAT seem to be good indicators of getting good grades in well-defined spaces. But things like creativity, curiosity, work ethic are much better predictors of other kinds of success that frankly matter much more in the real world. I know some really, really unintelligent people who got good grades in colle…
I suggest these effects are because being a good student aka "eating books" is correlated with conscientiousness. They show up to lectures, prepare, and test well.
And conscientiousness is very highly correlated with lifetime achievement, AND fufillment [4]. So measuring conscientiousness, and signalling high conscientiousness is a really good idea.
IQ is great, but conscientiousness is how you get things done [5]
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9004755/
1.b (edited) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/05/20/heres... might be better. I thought this was "common knowledge"!
2. https://mpreiner.medium.com/what-is-the-impact-of-your-high-...
3. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education...
Here are just a few insane things.
> Figure 1 shows a linear relationship between SAT scores and cumulative first-year GPA for Dartmouth students. SAT scores are grouped into 16 equal-sized bins, and we plot mean first-year GPA (y-axis) against mean SAT score (x-axis) in the bin.4 Within any smaller range of scores, first-year GPA and the SAT maintain the same linear relationship.
Total nonsense. Figure 1 does not mean that SAT/ACT scores are predictive of academic achievement! Without seeing the variance you cannot make this statement. At all. The fact that there is a linear relationship means nothing statistically.
> SAT by itself explains about 22% of the variation in first-year GPA
So we're explaining less than 1/5th of the variance. This makes SAT scores basically worthless, this account for almost none of the real world performance of people, never mind how redundant they are with GPAs.
The correct title for this would be: SAT and ACT are not highly predictive of academic achievement at Dartmouth.
There's a massive disconnect between the title and the data. The data shows there is likely some statistical effect on performance by SAT. The title would have you think that if you know a student's SAT scores, you would be good at predicting their outcomes at Dartmouth. The data shows this is wrong: if you only used SAT scores, you would almost always be wrong in predicting how well a student would do.
A lot of papers play this game, they imply that statistically significant means meaningful. Nothing could be further from the truth. Something can be statistically significant but inconsequential.
Never mind that they define as success at Dartmouth as your first year GPA.
To measure academic achievement they use First Year GPA. It makes sense they're correlated, both require studying known material for a test. But is GPA the best measure, especially first year? I would be interested in other metrics like 3rd-4th year GPA or placements into jobs and such.
I agree. Every other comment here seems to be like "well duh" and I'm... skeptical. My experience is that the ACT/SAT seem to be good indicators of getting good grades in well-defined spaces. But things like creativity, curiosity, work ethic are much better predictors of other kinds of success that frankly matter much more in the real world. I know some really, really unintelligent people who got good grades in colle…
Here's the money quote: >> Importantly, these test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts. Precisely. SATs aren't about hurting the poor or disadvantaged. It's about giving them a chance.
Why is every parameter of admissions open to change despite tradition, except that one?
Here's the money quote: >> Importantly, these test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts. Precisely. SATs aren't about hurting the poor or disadvantaged. It's about giving them a chance.
Standardized exams are the most fair and transparent.
Materials and tutors are available easily for free or cheaply on the internet nowadays.
Here's the money quote: >> Importantly, these test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts. Precisely. SATs aren't about hurting the poor or disadvantaged. It's about giving them a chance.
If the universities were sincere about that, they would figure out how to increase enrollment. Why is every parameter of admissions open to change despite tradition, except that one?
Shocking that a “Scholastic Aptitude Test” or “American College Test” would predict future scholastic achievement at the collegiate level.
Those are marketing terms, though. It's not trivial to go from performance on a single test to performance throughout the year, which will include long-form writing, lab work, and other forms of learning.
Here's the money quote: >> Importantly, these test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts. Precisely. SATs aren't about hurting the poor or disadvantaged. It's about giving them a chance.
If the universities were sincere about that, they would figure out how to increase enrollment. Why is every parameter of admissions open to change despite tradition, except that one?
Here's the money quote: >> Importantly, these test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts. Precisely. SATs aren't about hurting the poor or disadvantaged. It's about giving them a chance.
>> Third, under test-optional policies, some less-advantaged students withhold test scores even in cases where providing the test score would be a significant positive signal to Admissions. Importantly, Dartmouth Admissions uses SAT scores within context; a score of 1400 for an applicant from a high school in a lower-income community with lower school-wide test scores is a more significant achievement than a score of 1400 for an applicant from a high school in a higher-income community with higher school-wide test scores. Admissions uses numerous detailed measures of outcomes at the high school and neighborhood levels to account for these known disadvantages. As one example, Admissions computes a measure of how each applicant performs on standardized tests relative to the aggregate score of all test-takers in their high school, using data available from the College Board.