Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Does Sorting Make A Difference In The Sat’S Prediction Of Course Grades And Cumulative Gpa At Macalester College?, Yuen Ting Liu

Economics Honors Projects

This paper estimates the predictive power of the SAT for college success. Most studies use GPA as a proxy for college success, but GPA is subject to differing grading standards across instructors and departments. Using individual course grades of Macalester College students from 1996 to 2005, this paper uses fixed effects to control for students sorting themselves into particular departments and courses. After controlling for sorting by major, a general trend emerges: the Math SAT is more predictive for science and math-related social science majors while the Verbal SAT is more predictive for language majors. After controlling for sorting by …