Is the SAT really that important?

fignewton
Sat, 30 Jul 2011 18:56:40 +0000

The basic problem of the studies that are based on the UC system is that they are hardly representative of the national pool of students. Tracking the performance of students who were mostly selected based on their high school record is bound to yield … expected results.



The data sample used was comprised of students accepted to UC before a new policy that emphasized HS GPA was put into effect for the UC system (I assume that is what you are referring to). One may argue that the students in the study would not be representative of the incoming freshmen nationwide, which would restrict the conclusions to UC-type students. However, the CB study concerned a wide range of institutions and came to a similar conclusion that the SAT provides a statistically significant but small improvement over the HS GPA taken alone. (And the CB limited the study to first-year results in college, which would be expected to be more highly related to the SAT than four-year results).

My point is that universities and colleges may be placing an emphasis on the SAT/ACT/etc which is not commensurate with the available data.