<p>I do alum interviews for Brown overseas. The main alum rep for admissions over here was visiting Brown recently and checked in with two freshmen admitted from our region last year. She just sent me an update on how "my" interviewee is doing and how he is adjusting to Brown--he appears to be having a great time!</p>
<p>I was an adcom years ago at a small engineering school. I did not formally track my admits, but I got to know many of them (I play in a euchre club now with one of my admits!). I really enjoyed following them through school. My office was always open & students often stopped by to chat. I monitored their grades informally, since my students all had co-op jobs & I also worked closely with their employers. We had a person in charge of institutional research who provided us with reports by school, which were used in various ways. </p>
<p>I served on a school district advisory committee when my kids were younger, and one of the things I pushed was actually USING the reports generated by our public (and some private) colleges for important feedback. Unfortunately, I never got anywhere with that. I bring it back up every so often, but it goes nowhere. I was pleased to see a report in our local paper this past weekend from a neighboring school district. It detailed the performance of their grads at our state flagship U. Now if only more districts would do that ... and if they would report on how students at other schools are doing (in other words, not just the cream of the crop).</p>
<p>I can confirm that Harvard does keep track of its "results" (or at least they did as of 5-7 years ago).</p>
<p>I especially wonder if they watch students they've given big merit $$.</p>
<p>
[Quote]
Do you know if anyone tries to correlate, say, SAT scores with performance in college?
[/QUOTE]
Yes. In fact, I know of a few schools, including UVa, that have just started validity studies using data from the new version of the SAT. Until these studies are done, I think some admission officers will continue to give ambiguous answers when asked how they're using the new exam.</p>
<p>I'm not sure anyone could have done a solid validity study before this year. The new version of the SAT debuted in March of 2005 and the students who took that exam probably just finished their first year of college last May.</p>
<p>I know that there was a rumor at my high school that the reason Tufts had rejected every one of our applicants was because they had accepted two students several years back and both did terrible when they got there.</p>
<p>VeryHappy, there is lots of this kind of research being done--in fact, it is on the basis of such research that some schools have begun the limit the role that SATs play in the evaluation of candidates. And of course, some have eliminated SAT and ACT test scores altogether. The College Board is not merely interested in what other people doing; they also have people on their own staff who do this stuff regularly. And of course, people outside of college board conduct this kind of inquiry too.</p>
<p>I am not sure how many individual schools have elected to publish the results of these studies as they relate to their own students (I haven't been mucking around in student-related research literature lately), but I know published national- and system-level studies have been influential. Enough so that I've seen CC participants mention the findings offhand. </p>
<p>Of course, as DeanJ rightly points out, newer versions of these tests call for new research.</p>
<p>"I mean, suppose you're the AdComm at Big Flagship State University. Don't you want to know whether the 20 kids from Little County High School do better than, worse than, or the same as the 30 kids from Big City High School with identical scores and GPAs?"</p>
<p>That may be, but let's say you find that the 20 kids from LCHS do worse than the 30 kids from BCHS with identical scores and GPA's. How does that influence how you admit from LCHS in the future? And isn't that fundamentally unfair to the bright LCHS kid? I've never understood the "high school halo" thing or why the past performance of other kids who attended the same high school should reflect on or influence decisions for any individual future kid.</p>
<p>When I went to boarding school, I found out that an admissions committee member was tracking me because he knew about my grades before I even told him.</p>
<p>"isn't that fundamentally unfair to the bright LCHS kid?"</p>
<p>No, not unless he's got a 4.0. What the past performance of LCHS kids tells you is that LCHS is handing out 3.7's on the basis of easier work than BCHS. In other words, if the BCHS kid with a 3.7 transferred to LCHS, his grades would probably go up to about a 3.9. Conversely, if the LCHS kid's 3.7 reflects his best work, he'd probably only have a 3.5 at BCHS.</p>
<p>Now if you're comparing two kids with 4.0's, then it is unfair to "discount" the LCHS kid's grades, because the scale at his high school is not sensitive enough to show whether he's got the same chops as the BCHS 4.0 or not. But if he's below a 4.0, then he's not maxing out what's being offered to him.</p>
<p>My oldest goes to a big flagship u (UF), in the honors program, and he keeps in regular contact with the admissions officer that recruited him. He and she just kind of hit it off at that first meeting, they are into the same kind of music, and that led to great conversation. They often run into each other at shows or clubs.</p>
<p>Anyway, now he goes to her with questions or for advice. I think she has been more of a "counselor" than his official "counselor". She has hooked him up with internships and introduced him to professors and deans of programs that he is interested in.</p>
<p>So, make friends with your admissions counselor :)</p>
<p>There is a discipline called "institutional research", part of which is to address questions like the OP raised. There is even a professional association for such professionals. Of course colleges look at the internal impact of admissions decisions, and this is not difficult with computerized databases. That's one reason, BTW, that computerized admissions databases are handy - the data is then easy to incorporate into broader institutional databases.</p>
<p>If you want to learn more, just google the term.</p>