A new paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, analyzes the relationship among high school grades, first-year college grades, and college admissions assessments (SATs and ACTs). The researchers find “high school GPA has relatively little predictive power for academic success during a student’s first year.” In fact, standardized tests are four times more accurate than grades in projecting student outcomes than grades given by high school and college teachers.

The context for the analysis, entitled “Standardized Test Scores and Academic Performance at Ivy-Plus Colleges,” was the post-Covid trend of selective colleges making the submission of SATs and ACTs optional, primarily because these tests were seen as biased against students from disadvantaged families. The researchers studied these three quantifiers — GPAs, college grades, and test scores– to see how well they aligned with actual student achievement.

Here are three takeaways:

• “SAT and ACT scores have substantial predictive power in forecasting students’ academic performance.”

• “High school GPA has relatively little predictive power for academic success during a student’s first year.”

• SAT and ACT scores substantially outweighed the predictive power of high school and college grades.

In addition, the analysts found, “admissions policies that require applicants to submit test scores may benefit less advantaged students in the application process.”

The analysis was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, the JPB Foundation, and the Overdeck Family Foundation.