Socioeconomic Status and the Relationship between the SAT® and Freshman GPA: An Analysis of Data from 41 Colleges and Universities. Research Report No. 2009-1

Critics of educational admissions tests assert that tests measure nothing other than socioeconomic status (SES), and that their apparent validity in predicting academic performance is an artifact of SES. We examine relationships among SAT, SES, and freshman grades in 41 colleges and universities and show that (a) SES is related to SAT scores (r = 0.42 among the population of SAT takers), (b) SAT scores are predictive of freshman grades (r = 0.47 corrected for school-specific range restriction), and (c) statistically controlling for SES reduces the estimated SAT-grade correlation from r = 0.47 to r = 0.44. Thus, the vast majority of the SAT-grade relationship is independent of SES: The SAT-grade relationship is not an artifact of common influences of SES on both test scores and grades. Correlations and Partial Correlations Among SAT, College GPA, HSGPA, and SES by School is appended.