How do colleges use the SAT in admission practices?
Undergraduate colleges and universities in the United States use the SAT as a valuable and reliable measure of college readiness. Research studies consistently show that the SAT is an excellent predictor of college success. It also serves the important function of guarding against grade inflation at the high school level. The best use of the SAT in the admission process is in combination with high school grades. The SAT and high school grades are both very predictive of first-year college success and, because they are slightly different measures, together they are extremely powerful. The great majority of our nation’s colleges and universities accept the SAT as an integral part of the admission process, and most that require the submission of SAT scores do so because they know they can make better admission decisions if they have as much data as possible about every student applicant.
