Doctoral preliminary-examination grades and thesis ratings correlated about 0.6 with later success, while recommendation letters ranged from 0.01 to 0.70¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · associational r? · q2 · i3 large
Currency · newest study 1922 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q2 i3 Grades in the Ph.D. preliminary examination and Doctorate thesis ratings gave mean correlations of approximately 0.6 with criteria of success in later work. → Gates 1922 q2 i? Judgments based on letters of recommendation correlated with success from 0.01 to 0.70 depending on the letter's author. → Gates 1922 (2)

Evidence¶

Gates 1922¶

Gates, Arthur I. (1922). Educational psychology at the Princeton meeting of the American Psychological Association. The Journal of Educational Psychology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Educational_Psychology

q2 · i3 · associational · r?

Conference report of Laura M. Chassell's (Ohio State University) predictive study; the printed mean correlations of approximately 0.6 (r = 0.6) with later-success criteria are reported as printed, with no other statistics.

"Laura M. Chassell, Ohio State University, found that grades received in the preliminary examination for the degree of Ph. D. and ratings of the Doctorate thesis gave mean correlations of approximately 0.6 with various criteria of success in later work."

Gates 1922 (2)¶

q2 · i? · review · r2

Same conference report section on predictive value of tests; recommendation-letter judgments showed correlations from 0.01 to 0.70 depending on the letter's author, a range reported as printed with no summary effect size.

"Judgments based on letters of recommendation gave correlations with success ranging from 0.01 to 0.70, depending on the author of the letters."

Discussion¶

IQ is only approximately constant across successive examinations, with first-to-fifth IQ correlation of +0.82 and prediction error of 4 to 7 points — related

Page metadata

Field	Value
`type`	`claim`
`id`	`doctoral-grades-predict-later-success-better-than-letters`
`title`	`Doctoral preliminary-examination grades and thesis ratings correlated about 0.6 with later success, while recommendation letters ranged from 0.01 to 0.70`
`description`	`Doctoral preliminary-examination grades and thesis ratings correlated about 0.6 with later success, while recommendation letters ranged from 0.01 to 0.70`
`status`	`review`
`evidence_strength`	`weak`
`newest_evidence`	`1922`
`generated`	by `process:wiki-ingest` on `2026-10-24`
`trust`	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
`sources`	2 — `gates-1922`, `gates-1922-2`

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