Is the SAT really that important?

fignewton
Sat, 30 Jul 2011 17:32:49 +0000

Ironically, there is a fair amount of evidence that SAT scores are poor predictors of college success compared to HS grades (yes, those unreliable, non-standardized, possibly inflated, grades).

For example, see [this Berkeley paper](Publications | Center for Studies in Higher Education).

Even the College Board came to the [url=http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/Validity_of_the_SAT_for_Predicting_First_Year_College_Grade_Point_Average.pdf]conclusion[/url] that there is an additional (but relatively small) increase in predictiveness when the SAT was added to HS GPA, even though the CB focused on predicting only the first-year GPA in college.