Higher Standards, Higher Completion Rates: How Standardized Test Scores Predict College Success
Key Points
- Four-year colleges where entering students have higher SAT and ACT scores tend to have higher completion rates.
- When entering students have a lower-bound SAT score (or equivalent) of 1300, colleges have a predicted completion rate of 90 percent. But when entering students have a lower-bound SAT score of 900, the predicted completion rate falls to just 51 percent.
- The relationship between standardized test scores and college completion rates remains strong even after controlling for other factors, such as the student body’s socioeconomic and demographic distribution and institutional resources.
- The recent movement toward reinstating standardized testing requirements may help colleges ensure that the students they admit are academically prepared to complete college.
Executive Summary
Most selective colleges and universities stopped requiring standardized tests in admissions during the COVID-19 pandemic, but many have now begun to reinstate them. These policy changes highlight the role academic preparation plays in college completion outcomes. This report links the standardized test scores of students in the entering class of 2018—one of the last entering classes before the test-optional movement gained steam—to six-year college completion outcomes as of 2024.
Test scores and college completion have a strong relationship. Institutions where admitted students’ test scores are higher tend to have much stronger completion rates. For example, an institution where entering students have a 25th percentile SAT score of 900 has a predicted completion rate of just 51 percent. But an institution with a 25th percentile score of 1300 has a predicted completion rate of over 90 percent.
