Group Data on High School Grade Point Averages and Scores on Academic Aptitude Tests As Predictors of Institutional Graduation Rates

Abstract

For every 4-year college in the United States listed in the 1998 College Handbook of the College Board, the percentages of students graduating within 6 years of entering and of students having high school grade point averages (GPAs) of at least 3.00 were recorded. The authors also obtained the College Board Scholastic Assessment Test I (SAT I) Verbal and Math and the American College Test (ACT) scores at the 25th and 75th percentiles of the distributions of scores of the enrolled freshmen. The SAT I Verbal and Math and the ACT scores at the 25th and 75th percentiles proved to be good predictors of the percentage of students graduating from the same institution that admitted them as freshmen ( rs ranging from .62 to .73), as did the percentage of freshmen having high school GPAs of 3.00 or higher ( r = .49). The correlations of the group percentages and means with the criterion were considerably higher than the predictive-validity coefficients of the SAT I and ACT scores for individual graduation as reported in the literature.