<p>For all sorts of reasons, some students fail to graduate from the schools where they start. Some of them transfer to other schools. Some of them do drop out. Some drop out for poor academic performance. Others (like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs) drop out to pursue their ambitions early.</p>
<p>However, I don’t think the OP’s issue is whether these measurements are reliable predictors of future success, or even whether they are reliable predictors of academic performance in college. The OP’s question is about using each of 3 measurements (or maybe a combination) to characterize the student bodies at various colleges. He wasn’t perfectly clear about precisely what characteristics we’re trying to compare. They have something to do with studiousness or “intensity”. Those could be two different things. A college might enroll many very intense, ambitious students who aren’t especially studious.</p>
<p>I don’t doubt that GPA + test scores combined is a better predictor of *something<a href=“such%20as%20academic%20performance%20in%20college”>/i</a> than test scores alone. Where does the OP find it, though? Again, many colleges don’t even report GPA in their CDS files. None of the major college rankings (US News, Forbes, WM, stateuniversity) use average GPAs to calculate rankings.</p>
<p>Look again at the SAT score ranking I cited above:
<a href=“Top 500 Ranked Colleges - Highest SAT 75th Percentile Scores”>USA University College Directory - U.S. University Directory - State Universities and College Rankings;
If you could add average GPAs into that ranking, would the list change very much? For the OP’s purposes, would it paint a clearer, more accurate picture? I doubt it. Almost all the schools with the highest SAT numbers also have high UW GPAs (and relatively low admission rates). The converse is not necessarily true. Many schools with high reported UW GPAs do not also have very high average test scores (or very low admit rates). The also often have big Greek, D1 sports, and party scenes (which tends not to be the case at schools with the highest average test scores.)</p>
<p>Examples: Georgia, the Daily Beast #5 Party School, reports an average entering GPA of 3.83; Colgate, the Daily Beast #4 Party School, reports an average entering GPA of 3.64; UMiami, the Daily Beast #3 Party School, reports an average entering GPA of 4.2; UCSB, the DB #2 Party School, reports an average entering GPA of 3.91. UIUC, the #1, doesn’t report GPA in its CDS. </p>