Success in college for students with discrepancies between performance on multiple-choice and essay tests.

Abstract

Students with high scores (top third) on the essay portion of an Advanced Placement examination and low scores (bottom third) on the multiple-choice portion of the examination were compared with students with the opposite pattern (top third on the multiple-choice questions and bottom third on the essay questions). Across examinations in different subject areas (history, English, and biology), students who were relatively strong in the essay format and weak in the multiple-choice format were as successful in their college courses as students with the opposite pattern, especially in those courses where grades are typically not determined by multiple-choice tests. Although differential essay and multiple-choice test performance was not related to course grades, it was related to performance on other tests. Students in the high multiple-choice/low essay group performed much better than the other group on other multiple-choice tests, especially the verbal section of the SAT. In relation to their performance on multiple-choice tests, students in the high essay/low multiple-choice group performed well on other essay tests.