We use cookies to personalize and improve your browsing experience. To learn more about how we store and use this data, visit our privacy policy here. The reality is there are many schools and many categories of students for whom test scores remain to be very important.
SAT and ACT scores are considered by many institutions to be the most effective data points we have right now to compare students from different high schools and different parts of the country. These tests are not perfect, by any means, and they do not accurately assess many of the intelligences and skills a student might bring to a school, but, for better or worse, they are what colleges have right now to use as an equalizing factor.
And so they will remain an important component in admissions at many schools, particularly large institutions. The ACT, first administered in , has a different design.
First, there are more parts to it. In addition to multiple-choice tests of "educational development," which are the basis for the score, students also complete two questionnaires that cover the courses they have taken; their grades, activities, and the like; and a standardized interest inventory. Each of the four tests is scored on a scale from 1 to 36 subscores within the tests are on a 1 to 18 scale ; the four scores are combined into a composite score on the 1 to 36 scale.
We turn now to the assumption that the score on an admissions test should be given the greatest weight in the selection process. This outcome is most frequently measured by freshman-year grade point average, and numerous studies have been conducted with data from both tests to determine how well their scores do predict freshman grades—that is, their predictive validity.
Warren Willingham provided an overview of current understandings of predictive validity for the workshop. In practice, both tests have an average correlation with first-year college grades that ranges from. Most important of these is selection bias. Student self-selection restricts the pool of applicants to any given institution, and it is only the scores and grades of the students who were selected from that pool that are used to calculate predictive validity.
Since those students are very likely to be academically stronger than those not selected, the capacity of tests and scores to have predicted the rejected students' likely lower performance does not enter into the equation. In addition, freshman grades are not based on uniform standards, but on often subjective judgments that vary across disciplines and institutions; this factor also tends to depress the tests' predictive validity Willingham, , 6—8.
This point also underscores the problems with using freshman-year grades as the criterion variable; like the test scores themselves, GPAs that are calculated to two decimal points lend this measure a deceptively precise air. They are used as the criteria for prediction because there is no superior alternative. Most colleges rely in admissions as much or more on high school GPAs or class rank as they do on test scores, and the predictive validity of both numbers together is higher than that of either one alone Willingham, It is important to note that the high school GPAs are also a "soft" measure—grading standards range as widely at that level as they do in college.
However, GPAs reflect several years of performance, not just several hours of testing time. Using high school grades and test. More specifically, the amount of variance in predicted outcome is given by r-squared, so a correlation of. Moreover, because both SAT and ACT scores generally predict slightly higher college grades for minority students than they actually receive, "it is not dear that the answer to minority group representation in higher education lies in improved prediction The challenge is not conventional academic prediction but rather to find valid, socially useful, and workable bases for admitting a broader range of talent" Willingham, — Few colleges would define successful students only by the criterion of their freshman-year GPA.
One study has shown that other, qualitative measures—specifically high school honors, school reference, applicant's essay, and evidence of persistence—have been used to identify students likely to be successful in broader ways more explicitly related to institutional goals see Willingham, Although institutions may have success with such efforts, it is clear that test scores and GPAs provide reliable and efficient information that many admissions officers could not easily do without.
But test scores were not designed to provide information about all of the factors that influence success in college, which is why test developers specifically recommend that a student's score be used as only one among many criteria considered in the admission process. It is well known that conflicting impulses motivated the pioneers of college admissions tests—some hoped to open the nation's ivory towers to able students from diverse backgrounds while others sought "scientific" means of excluding particular groups see Lemann [a, b], for a detailed account of the thinking of some of the pioneers.
The legacy of association with now-discredited theories about racial differences, and with xenophobic and racist policies of the early twentieth century, lends impact to still-common charges that standardized tests are biased against minority groups and women National Research Council, — However, whatever the problems in the construction of earlier instruments, a considerable body of research has explored the possibility of bias in the current admissions tests, and it has not substantiated the claim that test bias accounts for score disparities among groups see Jencks, The steering committee concludes that the standardized tests available today offer important benefits that should not be overlooked in any discussion about changing the system:.
Both the SAT and ACT cover relatively broad domains that most observers would likely agree are relevant to the ability to do college work. Neither, however, measures the full range of abilities that are needed to succeed in college; important attributes not measured include, for example, persistence, intellectual curiosity, and writing ability.
Moreover, these tests are neither complete nor precise measures of "merit"—even academic merit. Consequently, the assumption that either test measures the criterion that should bear the greatest weight in admissions is flawed. Both tests provide information that can help admissions officers to make sense of other information in a student's record and to make general predictions about that student's prospects for academic success.
The task of constructing a freshman class, however, requires additional information. The second assumption on which many claims of unfairness rest—that the score is a precise measure—is also weak.
A particular score summarizes a student's performance on a particular set of items on a particular day. If a student could take a test 50 or times, his or her scores would vary even if the student neither learned nor forgot anything between test administrations.
Thus, assuming that the test is a valid measure of the targeted skills and knowledge, his or her performance on those skills and that knowledge could be described by this range. Ranges can overlap, as is illustrated in Figure 2 , which shows the hypothetical performance of two students in multiple administrations of comparable forms. Hypothetical score ranges for students A and B.
See text for discussion. Student A, whose scores across many administrations would average , would earn scores ranging between and , and student B, who averaged , would earn scores ranging between and Chance could dictate that any one of student A's many potential scores would be the one he or she actually received and submitted to colleges, as is true for student B the shaded area indicates the potential overlap. Either student could seem to be the higher scorer.
Another way of looking at this point is to consider that only fairly large differences in scores could be of use in distinguishing among students who could and could not undertake the work at a particular institution.
Using data collected from eleven very selective institutions, Vars and Bowen calculated that "the coefficient on the combined SAT score [verbal plus mathematics] implies that a point increase in SAT score for example, from to raises a student's predicted GPA by roughly 0. In other words, even a school that has determined that the GPA predicted. Assuming a standard error of measurement for the total SAT score of 43 with these hypothetical sets of scores, the probability that student B would score higher than student A on a particular administration of the test is approximately.
A different sort of test—for example, a licensure exam designed to identify as potential air traffic controllers students who had mastered a specific minimum body of material—could be used to discriminate among students whose scores are quite close together. But such a test would have a cutoff score derived from a clear articulation of the knowledge necessary to perform the job safely and would likely contain many questions targeted toward refining the discrimination around the cutpoint.
Such a test would be useful for identifying those who can and cannot perform particular tasks, but not for spreading all the test takers on a scale. Neither the SAT nor the ACT was designed to make fine distinctions at any point on their scales; rather, both were designed to spread students out across the scales, and both are constructed to provide a balance of questions at a wide range of difficulty levels.
These tests are most useful, then, for sorting an applicant pool into broad categories: those who are quite likely to succeed academically at a particular institution, those who are quite unlikely to do so, and those in the middle.
Such categories are likely to be defined differently by different institutions, depending on the rigor of their programs and their institutional goals. As Warren Willingham concluded about this point:.
In the early stages of the admissions process, the [predictive] validity of school grades and test scores is put to work through college recruitment, school advising, self-selection, and college selection. In the process, applicants disperse to institutions that differ widely In later stages of the admissions process, colleges At this point colleges face decisions among applicants in a grey area As Scholastic further explains, there is an array of reasons and purposes for these tests.
With unique acceptance standards, each individual school has a different formula that determines the significance of the various application factors, including GPA, test scores, recommendation letters, and other considerations. In addition, it appears that universities, especially the elite ones, are giving increased value to the SAT score in their admissions evaluation. Penn College of Liberal and Professional Studies is one example of a school that denotes a large portion of weight to standardized scores.
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