The revised SAT score and its potential benefits for the admission of minority students to higher education

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.2070

Keywords:

predictive validity, college admissions, SAT, revised SAT

Abstract

This paper investigates the predictive validity of the Revised SAT (R-SAT) score, proposed by Freedle (2003) as an alternative to compensate minority students for the potential harm caused by the relationship between item difficulty and ethnic DIF observed in the SAT. The R-SAT score is the score minority students would have received if only the hardest questions from the test had been considered and was computed using a formula score and a regression approach. In this article we examine the potential effects of using the R-SAT of minority students in the admissions decision to selective institutions, and its capacity to predict short and long-term academic outcomes as well as its potential benefits regarding differential prediction of college grades for minority students. To test this out, we examined the performance of the R-SAT score compared to the standard SAT score in a sample of graduates from California public schools and in a subsample of

students who enrolled in the University of California. We found that, in terms of the potential for college admissions for minority students, prediction power and the issue of overprediction, the R-SAT score did not perform significantly better than the SAT score.

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Author Biographies

Maria Veronica Santelices, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Maria Veronica Santelices, PhD, is an associate professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Department of Education. Her research interests include educational measurement and educational policy. She received a PhD in Education from University of California Berkeley in 2007.

Mark Wilson, University of California Berkeley

Mark Wilson, PhD, is a professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches courses on measurement in the social sciences, multidimensional measurement and applied statistics. He was the president of the Psychometric Society for 2011—12, and also became a member of the U.S. National Academy of Education in the same year. He has chaired two US National Research Council committees.

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Published

2015-11-15

How to Cite

Santelices, M. V., & Wilson, M. (2015). The revised SAT score and its potential benefits for the admission of minority students to higher education. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23, 113. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.2070

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Articles