Validity evidence to support the use of exam scores for admission to postsecondary institutions is generally provided in the form of correlation coefficients. The measures used to establish the correlations are scores on a particular entrance exam and most typically a student's first-year college grade point average (FYGPA). Correlations…

Colleges are increasingly interested in identifying the factors that maximize their enrollment. These factors allow enrollment management administrators to identify the applicants who have higher tendency to enroll at their institutions and accordingly to better allocate their money rewards (i.e., scholarship and financial aid). In this paper we…

Graduating high school seniors who are college and career ready has become a focal point of our nation. The Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program has been preparing college and career ready students who are first generation college-going students, from subgroups traditionally underrepresented in higher education, and from…

PISA 2012 results indicate that school systems that group students based on ability levels tend to have lower performance than those that do not divide students by ability. One way some in the United States have sought to increase equity of opportunity is to mandate enrollment of students in college-preparatory mathematics, i.e., Algebra 1 in…

LASSI responses were combined with SAT and GPA information from 342 first year college students to examine relationships between study habits, motivation, gender and achievement. Gender pervasively influenced the results. Despite lower SAT scores, females attained higher first year college GPAs. LASSI [Learning and Study Skills Inventory]…

The purpose of this study is to illustrate techniques for correcting a correlation between a predictor of success in college (admission test score or indicator of high school performance) with a measure of success in college (one-year retention or first-year GPA) given the restricted variances in the population used to calculate the correlations.…

Building on Shulruf, Hattie and Tumen (2008), this work examines the capacity of various National Certificate in Educational Achievement (NCEA)-derived models to predict first-year performance in Biological Sciences at a New Zealand university. We compared three models: (1) the "best-80" indicator as used by several New Zealand…

The current investigation sought to determine whether self-regulatory variables: "study strategies" and "self-satisfaction" correlate with first and second generation college students' grade point averages, and to determine if these two variables would improve the prediction of their averages if used along with high school grades and SAT scores.…

Prompted by some disturbing trends of reducing enrollment among females and minorities in an earlier study (Borman, Workman, Miller & Micceri, 2006), this study, using data from over 600,000 Florida State University System (SUS) applicants, demonstrates empirically how a trend that began during World War II helps ensure that males and…

This study examined the change in term grade point average (GPA) from 1974 through 2004 for 368,282 undergraduate student records at a large, research-extensive university in the Southeast. Descriptive analyses showed an increase in term GPA and average SAT scores over the 31-year period. Although average SAT and GPA increased, standard deviations…

This study was conducted to determine the accuracy of the commonly cited claims that teacher certification graduates are inferior to noncertification graduates in terms of entrance and exit criteria. Popular literature and conventional wisdom have apparently influenced state legislatures to enact legislation which places limits on the professional…

This study compared the cross-validated accuracy of American College Test (ACT) Composite score and high school grade point average (GPA) (HSAV) for predicting different levels of first-year college GPA. Logistic regression models were developed by institution, for predicting GPA levels of 2.00, 2.50, 3.00, 3.25, 3.50, and 3.75 or higher. These…

Issues and problems in assessment research are explored, with suggestions to help establish an acceptable correlation between student assessment scores and final grades. Topics include assessing instructor grading variation, instructor grade point average (GPA), success rates, and lack of linearity in grade scales. Solutions to these problems are…

One purpose of this study was to compare the incremental effectiveness over high school grade point average (GPA) alone of the American College Testing Program (ACT) assessment, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), and the California Achievement Tests (CAT) in predicting college freshman GPA. A second purpose was to look at the relative…

Thirty-five second-year medical students from the University of Alabama (Birmingham) used the services of a commercial test tutoring company to help them prepare for the National Board of Medical Examiners Part I examination. These students scored significantly higher than students who were considered to have comparable ability, based upon basic…