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The SAT is a multiple choice test. Students who do well on the SAT probably do well on multiple choice tests in general. If a college uses primarily multiple choice tests to grade its students, then it figures that students who did well on the SAT would do well in such an environment. In classes that use other forms of evaluation (oral reports, written tests, projects, presentations, etc.), the SAT would not necessarily be as useful of an indicator.
The CollegeBoard makes no claim for graduation rates, all it claims is that a higher score translates to better 1st year success. That's it. Freshman year.
The reason why it's first year is that if a student successfully finishes it the likelihood he will graduate rises. I don't know how they define "success", they tend to be closemouthed about some things. It couldn't be because SAT/ACT/AP/IB, in my opinion, have degenerated into a racket designed to separate students and parents from more and more money.
As a note, I've taught high school for 30 years and have been my school's AP coordinator the last several (along with Middle States Coordinator, another racket) so I've been on the front lines, so to speak, of the SAT wars.
Yup. It's supposed to predict transition into college. After the first year grades should be about the same. But the kids who had a decent first year will still end up with higher GPAs since they don't have the first semester or two grades dragging the overall down.
Most schools who have done thier own internal number crunching have found it pretty true, with the exception of students of color. High school GPA is usually a better predictor in that case.
One area where the SAT score tends to work across the board is the math score and STEM majors, which is why you will see engineering and science programs be sticklers for those math SAT scores. If you get in with lower than their threshold, it's only because they have some kind of mandatory support program they can send you to. At least the responsible ones do that. LOL. Some schools will let in kids just to keep their numbers up even though they will likely flunk out.
If someone scores very high on the SAT does that mean that the are more likely to do well in college academically? (Taking High School grades out of the equation)
If so, why, if not why?
If they apply themselves, yes.
College is not entirely a test of intelligence or academic achievement, but a certain level of both are required to be a high-performing college student. What is also required is more mundane skills such as work ethic and time management. A student who parties all night on "Thirsty Thursday" and who did not study for his examination on Friday nor read any of the material is likely to perform poorly on the professor's essay questions which deal heavily with the specific readings, no matter what his SAT score might have been. However, it may take him only 3 hours to study with no appointments with the professor and get an A rather than the six or eight hours, participation in study groups, meetings with the instructor, etc. it may have taken a lower-scoring student to.
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In my experience, moderately--enough to justify the test as part of the college admissions metric, but not to the point of splitting hairs between, say, a 2000 and a 2100, as far as aptitude goes. Of course, adcomms do this anyway, but in fairness, the admissions process has become insanely competitive to the point of it being a crap-shoot, so picking a 2170 over a 2140 isn't all that unfair.
The simple answer is yes. There have been numerous studies that have shown strong correlations between SAT scores and college success (graduation rates, 1st year GPA, etc.).
Now the main issue I have with this oversimplification is that people then think a strict top down selection is the only appropriate mechanism to use for acceptance into universities. While SAT scores may be the best predictors they still only explain 15-20% of the variance in the criterion (1st year GPA, graduation rates, etc.). Which means there are still a number of other factors accounting for the other 80% of the variance.
No. I had dismal test scores in HS and have a 4.0 (on a 4.0 scale) college GPA. I waited a bit to go to college since my parents wouldn't support it and I had to declare independence first.
While there is a relationship, I wouldn't consider it conclusive either.
I am always confused when I see these kinds of questions here. Why ask people here what they believe when there is plenty of hard data out there showing the relationship between SAT's and academics? If you want real information, then google the studies and find out. What people believe is irrelevant.
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