VALIDITY OF HIGH-SCHOOL GRADES IN PREDICTING STUDENT SUCCESS BEYOND THE FRESHMAN YEAR: High-School Record vs. Standardized Tests as Indicators of Four-Year College Outcomes

High-school grades are often viewed as an unreliable criterion for college admissions, owing to differences in grading standards across high schools, while standardized tests are seen as methodologically rigorous, providing a more uniform and valid yardstick for assessing student ability and achievement. The present study challenges that conventional view. The study finds that high-school grade point average (HSGPA) is consistently the best predictor not only of freshman grades in college, the outcome indicator most often employed in predictive-validity studies, but of four-year college outcomes as well. A previous study, UC and the SAT (Geiser with Studley, 2003), demonstrated that HSGPA in college-preparatory courses was the best predictor of freshman grades for a sample of almost 80,000 students admitted to the University of California. Because freshman grades provide only a short-term indicator of college performance, the present study tracked four-year college outcomes, including cumulative college grades and graduation, for the same sample in order to examine the relative contribution of high-school record and standardized tests in predicting longerterm college performance. Key findings are: (1) HSGPA is consistently the strongest predictor of four-year college outcomes for all academic disciplines, campuses and freshman cohorts in the UC sample; (2) surprisingly, the predictive weight associated with HSGPA increases after the freshman year, accounting for a greater proportion of variance in cumulative fourth-year than first-year college grades; and (3) as an admissions criterion, HSGPA has less adverse impact than standardized tests on disadvantaged and underrepresented minority students. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for admissions policy and argues for greater emphasis on the high-school record, and a corresponding de-emphasis on standardized tests, in college admissions. * The study was supported by a grant from the Koret Foundation. Geiser and Santelices: VALIDITY OF HIGH-SCHOOL GRADES 2 CSHE Research & Occasional Paper Series Introduction and Policy Context This study examines the relative contribution of high-school grades and standardized admissions tests in predicting students’ long-term performance in college, including cumulative grade-point average and college graduation. The relative emphasis on grades vs. tests as admissions criteria has become increasingly visible as a policy issue at selective colleges and universities, particularly in states such as Texas and California, where affirmative action has been challenged or eliminated. Compared to high-school gradepoint average (HSGPA), scores on standardized admissions tests such as the SAT I are much more closely correlated with students’ socioeconomic background characteristics. As shown in Table 1, for example, among our study sample of almost 80,000 University of California (UC) freshmen, SAT I verbal and math scores exhibit a strong, positive relationship with measures of socioeconomic status (SES) such as family income, parents’ education and the academic ranking of a student’s high school, whereas HSGPA is only weakly associated with such measures. As a result, standardized admissions tests tend to have greater adverse impact than HSGPA on underrepresented minority students, who come disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds. The extent of the difference can be seen by rank-ordering students on both standardized tests and highschool grades and comparing the distributions. Rank-ordering students by test scores produces much sharper racial/ethnic stratification than when the same students are ranked by HSGPA, as shown in Table 2. It should be borne in mind the UC sample shown here represents a highly select group of students, drawn from the top 12.5% of California high-school graduates under the provisions of the state’s Master Plan for Higher Education. Overall, under-represented minority students account for about 17 percent of that group, although their percentage varies considerably across different HSGPA and SAT levels within the sample. When students are ranked by HSGPA, underrepresented minorities account for 28 percent of students in the bottom Family Parents' School API Income Education Decile SAT I verbal 0.32 0.39 0.32 SAT I math 0.24 0.32 0.39 HSGPA 0.04 0.06 0.01 Source: UC Corporate Student System data on 79,785 first-time freshmen entering between Fall 1996 and Fall 1999. Correlation of Admissions Factors with SES Table 1