Measuring Success, Chapter 8

This is an interesting chapter.  Most of it is actually a republished chapter from Crossing the Finish Line, a 2011 book by Bowen, Chingos, and McPherson.  They used large data sets from 21 flagships and 4 state-wide systems to look at a very large cohort of students who started college in 1999, and see what predicted success.  They found that high school grades were less important than test scores, though test scores still have some predictive value.  This makes sense to me:  The ability to succeed at sustained tasks is distinct from (though not wholly unrelated to) the ability to do well on a test.  Also, a person who isn't strong at the things measured on tests might still find areas where they can succeed, while a person who can't devote themselves to regular academic work will have trouble succeeding at anything, even if they have certain mental traits.

After that portion of the chapter, some researchers at the College Board re-run that analysis with more recent data, and find similar trends, though the predictive power of grades has gone down while the predictive power of tests has gone up.  This is consistent with a hypothesis of grade inflation (per an earlier chapter).