<p>UC, </p>
<p>We are talking about two different things. You are talking about how the college employs the SAT scores for admissions purposes. So looking at best combination may result in higher apparent scores than looking at best single sitting score. I am talking about the distribution of SAT scores of enrolled students, as reported uniformly on the CDS. This has nothing to do with how the college evaluated the applications. These figures are comparable no matter how the college chose to interpret the scores.</p>
<p>It is true that SAT explains a low proportion of the variance in GPA (for all years, not just first year). However, it is the only thing we have that is standardized across high schools and colleges, that is readily available, and that correlates at all. So it is the best available. As noted, it also is highly correlated with other predictors. The alternative is to pretend that differences in the academic strength of enrolled students does not exist, but this attributes differences in performance to college factors rather than student factors.</p>