SAT and ACT scores beat high school grades at predicting success across nine UC colleges

Step by step

1. Grades no longer tell colleges enough ▶0:00

   Nick opens with a passage from the Forbes and New York Times reports. It says test scores are more reliable than high school grades. One reason is that grades have gone up in recent years. Without scores, the passage says, colleges have a hard time telling who will do well and who will struggle. Nick then quotes two college leaders. Brown's president, Christina Paxson, says test scores are a much better predictor of academic success than high school grades. MIT's dean of admissions, Stuart Schmill, brought back the test rule. He says straight A's alone are not enough to know if a student will succeed.

2. Two large studies point the same way ▶2:00

   Nick reads the New York Times summary of a study by a group called Opportunity Insights. It looked at the Ivy Plus colleges. Those are the eight Ivy League schools plus Duke, MIT, Stanford and the University of Chicago. The study found little link between high school GPA and success in college. But it found a strong link between SAT and ACT scores and later success. Nick then cites a University of California faculty review. It was led by Henry Sanchez, a doctor who studies disease, and Eddie Kamo, a professor of education. In 2020 it found that test scores beat high school grades at predicting success across the system's nine colleges. Those colleges enroll more than 230,000 undergraduates. The edge of test scores has grown over time, the group found.

3. College leaders know the research ▶4:00

   Nick quotes John Friedman, who studies economics. Friedman says test scores have vastly more predictive power than most people think. Then Nick reads what he calls the most interesting part of the New York Times article. Most college leaders said they knew about this research. Several told the writer, off the record, that they feared the political backlash on campus and in the media if they brought tests back. Georgetown's longtime admissions dean, Charles Deacon, said on the record that it is not politically correct. Nick says this helps families guess what colleges will do next.

4. Money gives colleges a reason to stay test-optional ▶5:00

   Nick asks listeners to picture themselves as a college president. Going test-optional, he says, brings in as many as 50,000 extra applications a year. That is because students without scores are much more likely to apply. At $75 per application, he says, that could be around $3.75 million for one college. He names a second payoff too. More applications let a college turn down more students, so it looks harder to get into. That pleases alumni. And he says the data shows that leads to more gifts. His guess is that colleges will stay test-optional for these reasons. But each year they will give students with scores more of an edge.

5. Scores already help at test-optional colleges ▶6:25

   Nick says the data backs up his guess that scores already carry weight. At Boston College, he says, the admit rate is 9.5% for students who apply without a test score. It is 27% for students who apply with one. At Notre Dame, he says, the admit rate doubles for students who send an SAT or ACT score. He says he could keep listing examples, but the pattern is clear to him. His advice to freshmen, sophomores and juniors is to treat the SAT and ACT the way students did in the past. Prepare, and do your best. That way more schools may say yes.

6. The score affects the price, not just the admit ▶7:25

   Nick says a student can still get into a hard-to-enter college without a test score. But he warns that a student who applies without one is much more likely to pay full sticker price. He says the overall data shows that merit awards go much more often to students who send a strong score. These awards do not depend on what a family can pay. They range, he says, from $25,000 to over $100,000 across the four years a student attends. In the sponsor segment, he names examples. They include $30,000 per year at USC, $25,000 per year at Notre Dame, and a $57,000 scholarship at Texas Christian University.

7. The fairness question ▶9:00

   Nick takes on the biggest worry about testing. Many people think it favors students who already have a head start. He reads the reports on score gaps by race and class. He also reads the fear that tests will hurt diversity now that the Supreme Court has limited affirmative action. Then he reads the finding he says should ease those fears. Within every racial group, students with higher scores do better in college. The same is true for both poorer and richer students. The study's authors also say diversity would plummet if colleges used scores alone. But almost no one wants that, Nick notes. The real question is whether a score should be one factor among many.

8. The test is the hardest part to game with money ▶10:40

   Nick's own view is that the test predicts well because money shapes it less than the rest of the application. Rich students can pay for music lessons and travel sports. They can get heavy help on their essays. Many go to private schools where counselors polish each application. On the test, he says, a student must sit in a room alone with no one to help. He is open about his stake. He owns Test Prep Gurus. He admits that scores rise when expert teachers work with students who do the work. Still, he argues, the edge money brings elsewhere on the application is bigger.

9. Scores can widen the door, not narrow it ▶13:25

   Nick points to MIT. Dean Stuart Schmill says scores help find strong students from less advantaged high schools. Without them, Schmill says, his team had two bad choices. They could guess and sometimes turn away qualified students. Or they could admit more students from private and well-off public schools with known records. After the test rule came back, Schmill says, MIT admitted the most diverse class in its history. A Harvard economist adds that students with high grades at little-known high schools suffer most without scores. For them, he says, the SAT is their lifeline. Nick also cites Pew Research Center polling. It shows a vast majority of Americans support using scores as one factor.