Saul Geiser and Roger Studley, University of California, October 29, 2001
Analysts at the University of California have prepared a study showing, they claim, that "The SAT II achievement tests predict freshman academic success at the University of California better than the SAT I reasoning test." They say that the SAT II "can be used to predict 16% of first-year grades" while the SAT I "by itself predicts only 13.3 percent of freshman grades." That difference strikes us as less than stunning. Bear in mind, too, that U.C. President Richard Atkinson - whose office issued this study - has already made waves with his controversial proposal that the university stop using the SAT I for admissions purposes. Bear in mind, too, that these findings only relate to those students who, for various reasons, have managed to wind up as U.C. freshmen, which is affected by sundry other admissions factors as well as California's demographics. (A sizable fraction of U.C. students are of Asian or Hispanic origin and there is reason to believe that they benefit from the SAT II because they can take one of its three component tests in their native language.) If you'd like a look, you can get a PDF version by surfing to http://www.ucop.edu/sas/research/researchandplanning/pdf/sat_study.pdf.
