In a 2007 University of California study of more than 80,000 students, Saul Geiser and Maria V Santelices found high-school grade-point-average (GPA) to be a stronger and more consistent predictor of college performance and graduation than SAT scores, which were more closely associated with family income and parental education.
WG Bowen, MM Chingos and MS McPherson’s 2009 study of entrants to 68 public universities found that high-school GPAs predicted graduation better than SAT scores. GPA captured perseverance, consistency and work habits, while SAT performance often mirrored unequal opportunities.
William Hiss and Valerie Franks’s 2014 study of nearly 1,23,000 records from 33 American institutions likewise found high-school GPA the strongest predictor of college success, with standardised tests adding little. Graduation rates differed by just 0.6 percentage points between test-submitters and test-optional admits.
Elaine Allensworth and Kallie Clark’s 2020 study of 55,000 graduates of Chicago Public Schools from 2006 to 2009 found that high-school GPA was about five times more predictive of college graduation than ACT scores.
Comparable evidence emerged in the Netherlands, where Martijn Meeter’s analysis of 1,80,000 students found secondary-school GPA substantially better at predicting first-year retention than national examination scores; the latter added no predictive value once school performance was considered.
Evidence at the level of postgraduate admissions points in the same direction, though less uniformly. A 2017 Vanderbilt University study of 683 biomedical doctoral students found undergraduate GPA more predictive than GRE scores of graduate grades and PhD completion. A 2021 study of 1,955 physics doctoral students across 19 American universities reported broadly similar findings. Other studies, however, suggest that neither measure is independently sufficient and that the two may be most useful in combination.
Yet, neither the Union Government nor the Supreme Court has seriously examined this research. Both have treated the superiority of a single-day, multiple-choice national entrance test as axiomatic. A three-hour MCQ test may reveal something, but it cannot reveal everything and must not be allowed to decide everything.
