<p>Although I know that grades are perhaps the most important factor for college admissions, what top 30 universities in comparision with the others do you think places the most emphasis on standardized test scores?</p>
<p>any of the large public institutions</p>
<p>...like Berkekey and UCLA.</p>
<p>Berkeley and UCLA...not necessarily. They don't publish their comprehensive formula, but they have one and I'm sure it favors gpa over test scores because the higher up the UC food chain you go, the more you find that is the case. </p>
<p>UCSD publishes their formula and they seem to go out of their way to limit the influence test scores can have. The current formula caps test scores at 3200. That is your total of SAT+Writing plus 2 SAT 2's. So basically, as I read it, if you get 2200 on SAT I, anything over 500 on the other two goes down the drain. The gpa is capped at 4500. That is your UC gpa X 1000. Such a formula makes it very difficult to make up a low gpa with high test scores. </p>
<p>UCD, on the other hand, has the same 4500 cap on gpa but their test score cap is 4000. Unless I'm misunderstanding the impact of that, that is a huge difference.</p>
<p>Not UC's. Look at the UC Pathways website and it will give you minimum criteria SAT for acceptance based upon GPA. But that does not mean you are admitted. The admitted student average SAT is much lower than private schools of comparable prestige.
2004 Freshman Admitted Class Averages
High School GPA: 4.17
ACT Composite Score: 28
SAT I Score: 1359
SAT II Math (1C and 2C) Score: 696
SAT II Writing Score: 682</p>
<p>However:</p>
<p> For Fall 2002, UC Berkeley admitted 98 percent of California resident applicants with SAT scores above 1400 whose GPAs were not below average for admitted students and who had not applied to one of three highly impacted majors.</p>
<p> For Fall 2002, UC Berkeley admitted 261 applicants with SAT I total scores between 900 and 999, 90 applicants with SAT I total scores between 800 and 899, and 27 applicants with SAT I total scores less than 800.</p>
<p>None. Colleges recognize that your GPA and transcript are far better indicators of academic ability and intelligence than SATs, and they treat them as such.</p>
<p>"None. Colleges recognize that your GPA and transcript are far better indicators of academic ability and intelligence than SATs, and they treat them as such."</p>
<p>Im sure this person really knows. Sheesh</p>
<p>One interesting perspective on this problem is fairtest.org, the website of an organization that opposes the current use of standardized tests (in fact, they seem to have a philosophical objection to tests, period, but I'm sure they would deny that).</p>
<p>However, on their website there is a very amusing "fact sheet", comparing the SAT I, SAT II, and ACT, and discussing their predictive validity. You can find this at <a href="http://www.fairtest.org/facts/univtestcomparison.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.fairtest.org/facts/univtestcomparison.html</a>.</p>
<p>There's a section called "validity research from independent studies". One excerpt:</p>
<p>"One study (J. Baron & M. F. Norman in Educational and Psychology Measurement, Vol. 52, 1992) at the University of Pennsylvania looked at the power of high school class rank, SAT I, and SAT II in predicting cumulative college GPAs. Researchers found that the SAT I was by far the weakest predictor, explaining only 4% of the variation in college grades, while SAT II scores accounted for 6.8% of the differences in academic performance. By far the most useful tool proved to be class rank, which predicted 9.3% of the changes in cumulative GPAs. Combining SAT I scores and class rank inched this figure up to 11.3%, leaving almost 90% of the variation in grades unexplained.</p>
<p>A University of California study analyzing the power of the SAT series and high school grades to predict success at the state's eight public universities found that the SAT I was the weakest predictor, with the test accounting for only 12.8% of the variation in FGPA. SAT II's and HSGPA explained 15.3% and 14.5% of the variation, respectively."</p>
<p>Does anyone else think that this is funny? This is the most prominent organization opposing standardized tests, and its fact sheets are supposed to make a compelling case. Yet, on its <em>own</em> fact sheets, FairTest mentions (and then bizarrely spins) studies that utterly fail to back up its contentions. </p>
<p>In the University of Pennsylvania study, the predictive power of the SAT I and SAT II combined actually exceeds the predictive power of class rank. In the UC study, the predictive validity of the SAT I and SAT II is almost <em>double</em> the validity of high school GPA. Indeed, in the study, the SAT II alone rates as a more effective measure than GPA. </p>
<p>If anything, wouldn't this illustrate that test scores are better predictors of academic success than high school statistics? (which is precisely what FairTest argues isn't the case)</p>
<p>Just thought that this was sort of interesting...</p>