SAT Predicts College Academic Performance

<p>In Defense of the SAT
The test is a far better measure of skill than skeptics claim.
(Newsweek)
"It’s commonly said that the SAT, taken in a senior year of high school, has only about a 40% correlation with a student’s freshman year college GPA"</p>

<p>"I’ve always had a skeptical feeling about the 40% correlation statistic, and so I’ve never relied on it or used it in print. There are two self-selection problems that make it really hard to control the data. First, high schoolers of diverging abilities apply to different schools–the strongest students apply to one tier of colleges, and the average students apply to a less ambitious tier, with some overlap. Second, once students get to a college, they enroll in classes they believe they can do well in. Many of the strongest students try their hand at Organic Chemistry, while more of the less-confident students take Marketing 101. At each of these colleges and courses, students might average a B grade, but the degree of difficulty in achieving that B is not comparable."</p>

<p>"It turns out that an SAT score is a far better predictor than everyone has said. When properly accounting for the self-selection bias, SAT scores correlate with college GPA around 67%. In the social sciences, that’s considered a great predictor. "</p>

<p>whole article here:
In</a> Defense of the SAT - Newsweek - Education</p>