Questioning the Admissions Assumptions

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Questioning the Admissions Assumptions
On the subject of measuring learning, you'd think that if grades could be used to predict anything, it would be future grades. Nope. While the grades are the best predictor of future grades (forget about those hopeless SAT scores) the bulk of variance in future grades - 70 percent of it - remains unexplained. "Why are we emphasizing prediction [of college success] as the central value in admissions if we do it so poorly?" Most of the emphasis, of course, will be on the uselessness of the SAT scores - so much so that it will be almost completely overlooked that grades, while better, are also pretty ineffective. More...