New Study Looks at High-School Record vs. Standardized Tests as Indicators of Four-Year College Outcomes

CSHE > News > New Study Looks at High-School Record vs. Standardized Tests as Indicators of Four-Year College Outcomes

June 18 2007 - High-school grades are often viewed as an unreliable criterion for college admissions, owing to differences in grading standards across high schools, whereas standardized tests are seen as methodologically rigorous, providing a more uniform and valid yardstick for assessing student ability and achievement.

A new CSHE research study by Saul Geiser and Maria Veronica Santelices, Validity of High-School Grades in Predicting Student Success beyond the Freshman Year, challenges that conventional view. The study focuses on the ten-campus University of California system, one of the most selective universities in the US, and finds that that high-school grade point average (HSGPA) is consistently the best predictor not only of freshman grades in college, the outcome indicator most often employed in predictive-validity studies, but of four-year college outcomes as well.

A previous study, UC and the SAT (Geiser with Studley, 2003), demonstrated that HSGPA in college-preparatory courses was the best predictor of freshman grades for a sample of almost 80,000 students admitted to UC. Because freshman grades provide only a short-term indicator of college performance, however, the present study tracked four-year college outcomes, including cumulative grades and college graduation, for the same sample in order to examine the relative contribution of high-school record and standardized tests in predicting longer-term college performance.

Key findings include:

(1) HSGPA is consistently the strongest predictor of four-year college outcomes for all academic disciplines, campuses and freshman cohorts in the UC sample;

(2) Surprisingly, the predictive weight associated with HSGPA increases after the freshman year, accounting for a greater proportion of the variance in cumulative fourth-year than first-year college grades; and

(3) As an admissions criterion, HSGPA has less adverse impact than standardized tests on disadvantaged and underrepresented minority students.

At the same time, the study also demonstrates the limits of prediction based solely on factors known at point of admission: Altogether admissions factors account for only about 30 percent of the total variance in college grades, underscoring the need for admissions officers to exercise great caution in using either HSGPA or test scores to predict how individual applicants may perform in college.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of its findings for admissions policy and argues for greater emphasis on the high-school record, and a corresponding de-emphasis on standardized tests, in college admissions. High-school grades provide a fairer, more equitable and ultimately more meaningful basis for admissions decision-making and, despite their reputation for unreliability, remain the best available indicator with which to hazard predictions of student success in college.

CONTACT:
Saul Geiser
Center for Studies in Higher Education
University of California, Berkeley
sgeiser@berkeley.edu

Maria Veronica Santelices
Graduate School of Education
University of California, Berkeley
mvsante@berkeley.edu

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