<p>The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA has created a basic [calculator[/url</a>] that estimates the probability a student will graduate in 4, 5, or 6 years based on the student’s </p>
<p>SAT or ACT score
high school GPA
sex
race/ethnicity</p>
<p>If her SAT score is 1200, she has a 50% chance of graduating in 4 years, 66% chance in 5 years, and 69% chance in 6 years. A more comprehensive calculator in the form of an Excel spreadsheet can be downloaded from the site. It considers the type of school attended and many other variables. I think students and parents should use such tools before investing a lot of time and money in college.</p>
<p>I don’t think a tool is needed unless you are in a situation where you don’t “know” very well the student you are putting through college and even then if you think you need a tool, you probably shouldn’t send the kid. If I had a sneaking suspicion any of my boys weren’t ready for college because they weren’t self reliant, because they had no academic drive in high school, because they had no discipline, because of any factor, I wouldn’t send them anyway. As far as the 4,5 or 6 years…we told the kids we’d pay for 4. S1 was done in 4 and S2 will actually be done in 3.5 years.</p>
<p>I’m surprised it doesn’t take into account family’s economic status or presence of financial aid. Someone on CC told me that the biggest factor in determining if someone graduates in 4 years is financial – does the student need to drop out and work because they can’t pay tuition?</p>
<p>Then again, SAT scores tend to have a close correlation with SES, so perhaps SES (and its attendant advantages/disadvantages) is already implicitly factored in.</p>
<p>For variation by grades, with 1000 (supposed median) SAT score white female, graduating in 4/5/6 years:</p>
<p>The other thing that’s fascinating about that study is that if you add to the model a bunch of survey data about recent behavior, reasons for picking a particular college, expectations of college, and self-assessment, you improve the predictive value meaningfully, but the SAT scores become a factor which does not affect the predictive value much at all.</p>
<p>Of course, what these calculators are really saying is that the chance of graduating in four years (or six years) has a lot more to do with the students than the colleges. So parents selecting colleges based on four year graduation rate may be overlooking the student’s characteristics in terms of how that affects the chance of graduating in four years.</p>
<p>While CC is typically engaged in spirited debates about the higher end of the students’ selectivity, the above line truly speaks volumes about the state of our education. </p>
<p>In so many words, how we explain that 47 percent of the students who could not get above 800 on the “old” SAT could get a college degree, even if took 6 years to obtain it. </p>
<p>Either something is really wrong with that model, or we should start worrying about the state of our tertiary education just as much as we should worry to death about the state of our K-12. </p>
<p>But then again, the model might be oversampling its … participants who graduat with a degree in Education.</p>
<p>Lots of SES data are included in the authors’ expanded model, including parental education, family income, source of funds to pay for first year of college, degree of concern about financing college education, and expectation to work to earn income during college. </p>
<p>What’s perhaps surprising is that family income turns out to be relatively unimportant, especially once you get out of real poverty. There is only minor difference between kids from families that earn over $150,000 and kids from families between $30,000 and $150,000; kids from the higher-income families actually appear to underperform kids from the middle category in 6-year graduation rate. On the other hand, the amount of family resources and personal resources being used to fund first-year costs is a significant and strong positive factor in predicting both 4-year graduation and 6-year graduation. (Which means, I guess, that income isn’t important, but wealth/savings is.)</p>
<p>Parental education is really significant, something the written report does not make clear. (The significance is hidden somewhat because of the precision of the data in this category. While family income is only measured in three categories, education is measured in eight different levels. This is true for quite a number of areas.) Having two parents with graduate degrees vs. two parents who did not graduate from high school makes a significant difference. So does religion – Jews (especially) and Catholics outperform other religions. Being Jewish is equivalent to 340 SAT points (on a 1600 scale) in terms of predicting four-year graduation. (It doesn’t make anywhere near as much difference in six-year graduation rate.) Having divorced parents makes a difference.</p>
<p>xiggi – That chart does NOT say that 47% of students who got 800 or less on their SATs graduated from four-year college. It only looks at people who are admitted to a four-year college in the first place, which also means that they had to apply to the four-year college, meaning they wanted to go, and qualified for admission. It’s not all that surprising that almost half of the kids with 800 SATs who are nevertheless motivated enough to apply and have enough on the ball to be admitted to four-year colleges eventually graduate. For all we know, this group could consist entirely of students with great high school grades notwithstanding their evident test anxiety, or students with a track record of fulfilling requirements no matter what, or for that matter students with extensive family resources.</p>
<p>I am not sure what difference your point makes. It remains that the model predicts that a student with a 800 SAT has a 47 percent chance of graduating in six years. If that model is correct we ought to cry about the level our colleges. Or start calling them something else.</p>
<p>Not just any student with an 800 SAT (CR+M) – the OP used a white female student with B+ high school grades. (And it is not that unbelievable – consider a student with a 520 CR / 280 M split, majoring in a subject which requires no math skill.)</p>
<p>If a student’s grades and test scores predict a low chance of getting a BA, it would be plausible to recommend that she aim to get an associate’s degree instead, but [Graduation</a> Rates of Associate Degree and Certificate-Seeking Students | The College Completion Agenda](<a href=“College Board Foundation | Home”>College Board Foundation | Home) states that as of 2008 only “34.1% of full-time, degree- or certificate-seeking students at two-year colleges graduate in four years or less.”</p>
<p>A similar calculator for 2-year degrees as for 4-year degrees would be helpful, but maybe the range of 2-year degrees and certificates offered is so wide that such a calculator would be less useful than for 4-year degrees.</p>
<p>As ucbalumnus noticed, the real point of this study is to establish predicted graduation rates for colleges based on their incoming classes, so that they can tell when they are doing a good job and beating the odds, even though their absolute graduation rates look low, and also to suggest ways they can jigger the odds through the admissions process (in good, positive ways, mostly).</p>
<p>For example, one of the things it shows is that HBCUs, despite 4- and 6-year graduation rates that are far below average, have graduation rates that are meaningfully better than otherwise predicted for the population they admit.</p>
<p>Beliavsky, the problem with your idee fixe that people should stop trying to go to college is that, except for now, you have never analyzed the benefits of NOT trying to go to college. It may be that for some people four-year college looks like a risky investment, but two-year college, or no college at all, are likely to be worse outcomes, and could very well be worse investments. If you want to convince people not to go to college, you need to show how they will be better off.</p>
<p>Even on a super-simplistic model, if I invest (or borrow) $100,000 for a college education, and have a 20% chance of $1 million additional lifetime earnings, and an 80% chance of no additional lifetime earnings, that’s still an investment many people would make. And I believe the outcomes for people who fail to graduate from college are superior to the outcomes of people who never attend college, both in terms of earnings and in terms of other social benefits.</p>
<p>You have a student who is completely unable to do basic middle school math graduating from high school. And with a B+ average to boot! </p>
<p>If you flip the scores around, you have an illiterate graduating from high school and not only being kicked to the next level, but also being able to graduate. </p>
<p>And the same alarm bells should go off. This model intimates that we have horrendous high schools that graduate incompetent students, and we have colleges that accept them and graduate them. Well, the model might simply confirm what is known. </p>
<p>As I wrote, that is the state of our education today! And that does not even address the HUGE percentage of HS students who never graduate. </p>
<p>We love to debate the cost of educating children. Perhaps we should measure the cost of ignorance, and reassess our obvious acceptance of the current mediocrity and abysmal performace all around.</p>
<p>^ Reminds me of the Auburn player who scored a 2 on the Wunderlich test (It is a 50 point scale where a 10= literate) yet still graduated from Auburn.</p>
<p>Isn’t the Wonderlic test given in the NFL combine where draft-worthy players are invited? If so, perhaps he just went straight to the NFL without necessarily graduating.</p>