Standardized Test Scores and Academic Performance
at Ivy-Plus Colleges
DATA INSIG HTS JANUARY 2024
Even among otherwise similar students with the same high school grades, we
find that SAT and ACT scores have substantial predictive power for academic success in college.
Finding #1: Students with higher SAT/ACT scores are more likely to have higher college GPAs
than their peers with lower scores
Students opting to not submit an SAT/ACT score achieve relatively lower college GPAs
Finding #2: High school GPA does a poor job of predicting academic success in college
high school GPA does little to predict academic success
in college.
Standardized Test Scores and Academic Performance at Ivy-Plus Colleges | PAGE 1
Higher SAT/ACT scores are associated with higher college GPAs but higher high school GPAs are not.
This gure depicts the relationship between students’ performance on standardized college entry exams (SAT/ACT) as well as their high school GPAs relative to
their academic performance in college (rst-year college GPA) when controlling for race, gender, and family income, as well as other characteristics such as rst-
generation and legacy status.
Finding #3: Students from dierent socioeconomic backgrounds who have comparable
SAT/ACT scores receive similar grades in college
there is no evidence that students from higher-resourced
backgrounds outperform students from lower-resourced backgrounds
Higher SAT/ACT scores are associated
with higher college GPAs – even when
comparing students from dierent
socioeconomic backgrounds.
This gure depicts the relationship between
students’ performance on standardized college entry
exams (SAT/ACT) and their academic performance
in college (rst-year college GPA), controlling for
race, gender, and family income, as well as other
characteristics such as rst-generation and legacy
status. We plot the relationship separately for
students attending less vs. more advantaged high
schools, dened by an index of challenge indicators
that feed into the College Board landscape tool.
We conclude that standardized test scores may have more value for admissions processes
than previously understood in the literature, especially for highly selective colleges
1. Opportunity Insights, Brown University and National Bureau of Economic Research
2. Dartmouth College and National Bureau of Economic Research
3. Dartmouth College
4. Ivy-Plus colleges are dened as the eight Ivy League colleges – Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, University of
Pennsylvania, and Yale University – plus Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago.
5. High schools with a challenge indicator above the 20th national percentile (approximately the 75th percentile in the distribution of applicants to Ivy-Plus colleges) are considered ‘less advantaged’.
Opportunity Insights
opportunityinsights.org
Standardized Test Scores and Academic Performance at Ivy-Plus Colleges | PAGE 2
