Both HSGPA and ACT strongly predict four-year college enrollment and enrollment in colleges with strong graduation rates¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r3 · q3
Currency · newest study 2020 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Odds of enrolling in a four-year college increase about 2.5 times per SD of either measure, with negative quadratic terms for both. → Allensworth 2019

Evidence¶

Allensworth 2019¶

Allensworth, E. M., & Clark, K. (2020). High School GPAs and ACT Scores as Predictors of College Completion: Examining Assumptions about Consistency across High Schools. Educational Researcher, 49(3), 198–211. https://consortium.uchicago.edu/publications/high-school-gpas-and-act-scores-as-predictors-of-college-completion doi:10.3102/0013189x20902110

q3 · i? · associational · r3

Models predicting enrollment among all high school graduates (n=55,084 per the methods section) and institutional graduation rates of colleges attended (Table 6). GPA becomes more predictive of college quality at higher achievement levels, and slopes of both measures with enrollment vary significantly across high schools.

"Both HSGPAs and ACT scores are strongly related to enrollment, with the odds of enrolling increasing by about 2.5 times for a standard deviation increase in either."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• HSGPA strongly predicts six-year college graduation among four-year college enrollees, with odds of graduating doubling per standard deviation of HSGPA — related
• HSGPA has a strong, positive relationship with college graduation that does not vary significantly in its linear slope across high schools — related
• ACT scores weakly predict college graduation, and the school-level variance in the ACT slope (0.192) exceeds the average slope (0.129), so school effects introduce more noise than the ACT signal — related
• For four-year (rather than six-year) graduation, ACT scores are slightly predictive but their coefficient is one-sixth the HSGPA coefficient — related
• School average ACT scores predict college graduation for students with the same individual HSGPA and ACT score, reducing between-school variance by 42 percent, while school poverty is not significant once average ACT is included — related
• ACT scores show a weak relationship with college graduation, with slope variation across high schools larger than the average signal — related
• School-average ACT scores strongly predict individual college graduation, doubling the odds per standard deviation — related
• Adding ACT scores to models with HSGPA contributes little to the prediction of college graduation and does not reduce between-school variability — related
• Students' grades are a more important predictor of college enrollment than ACT scores, which mainly constrain the selectivity of colleges attended — related
• The linear slope of the HSGPA–college graduation relationship does not vary significantly across high schools, so HSGPA provides a consistent signal across schools — related
• High school GPA predicts four-year college graduation more strongly than achievement test scores among Chicago graduates — related