Preliminary Findings on the Relationship between SAT Scores,

Last year when UC President Atkinson proposed discontinuing UC's use of the SAT I examination as an admissions requirement in favor of the SAT II, UCOP released several papers describing a series of studies assessing the relative predictive validity of SAT I and SAT II test scores and high school GPA on UC freshman GPA. The mediating effect of socioeconomic status (SES) was also considered. These studies were based on regression analyses of the aggregated pool of students who first applied and were admitted to the University of California from Fall 1996 through Fall 1999. In brief, the findings suggested that: 1) SAT II scores are better predictors of freshman GPA than SAT I scores, 2) SAT I scores are more sensitive to students’ socioeconomic status than are SAT II scores, and 3) when socioeconomic status is held constant the predictive power of the SAT I to predict freshman GPA is substantially diminished, while the