Reassessing the Role of Standardized Tests in University Admissions

There is a long-running debate over using standardized test scores to inform college and graduate admissions decisions, with some arguing that test scores are an important signal of academic strength and others arguing that they are biased and exclusionary. Here we revisit this issue by analyzing a novel dataset of more than 13,000 applications over roughly a decade to a large public policy master’s program in the United States. Consistent with past work, we find that GRE scores substantially improve predictions of first-year grades, relative to predictions based on GPA alone. However, when these predictions are used to inform admissions decisions, we find that test scores only modestly improve the expected academic quality of admitted students. The gap shrinks further when we augment the test-aware and test-blind predictive models with more fine-grained information available in student transcripts and other application materials. Specifically, we estimate that incorporating standardized test scores in our setting would result in admitting students that perform, on average, only 0.03 grade points better. We show—both empirically and theoretically—that this pattern stems from a subtle distinction between predictions and decisions. Even with improved predictions, the downstream admissions decisions are often the same; and where there are differences, they often involve selecting between similarly qualified applicants. Our results indicate that standardized test scores may be less important for university admissions than previously suggested.