@intparent @runnermif
What research do you have to support this idea? Have you actually worked in college admissions and observed this assumed behavior?
This helps me to better understand why people make such a big deal out of standardized test scores. They don’t understand the behavioral math behind it.
1, GPA’s are the most important single statistic published to date, but not the only statistic, to demonstrate a significant relationship with post secondary GPA. Like all statistics, it does not necessarily apply to an individual, but does to the average performance of groups. Admissions offices are striving largely to improve average GPA performance
- Admissions offices work to identify the rigor of secondary schools by: (1) knowing their past experience with the secondary school; (2) knowing the percentage of students in the secondary school who go on to post secondary education; (3) knowing what post secondary institutions they have recently attended.
- Like all statistically based tools, standardized tests scores are best used to predict the average behavior of a group and not of an individual when tested against post secondary GPA. This means that the average test score of a secondary school are helpful indicators of the secondary school's rigor. In the end, rigor counts.
Just to keep this complicated enough, many college admissions offices spend a good deal of time trying to improve the university’s average first year students’ GPA by weeding out students in the admissions process who appear to test well, but do not show motivation or interest. If they succeed, the entering class will outperform their standardized test score average.
This discussion can be easily confused with a different, but related issue: “Clipping the top as well as the bottom?” See earlier CC posting at entry 22 at http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/worcester-polytechnic-institute/2070820-is-wpi-clipping-the-top-as-well-as-the-bottom-p2.html
“Why Test Optional Admissions” is a related thread which presents the complexities of standardized testing and its relationship to student performance. See http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/2084255-why-test-optional-admissions-p1.html
Footnote for history buff: This all goes back to the purchase of ingredients for brewing at Guinness Brewery and the discovery of the “normal” or the “student’s” distribution.