An Attempt to Improve Prediction of College Success by Adjusting For High School Characteristics

Abstract

Studies reported periodically over the past fifty years have been concerned with the relationship between high school characteristics and college achievement. The findings of much of this research have been markedly inconsistent. Although Pittinger (1917) reported that graduates of large high schools obtained the best grades in college, other studies (Seyler, 1939; and Saupe, 1941) have obtained results favoring the graduates of small schools. More recently, Hoyt (1959) found a trend for students from smaller high schools to earn lower college grades when grades were adjusted for high school rank. Watley (1964) assessed the effects of type (public or private), location, and size of high school in relation to academic achievement in an engineering college and found that predictive efficiency was improved using predictions computed specifically for graduates of large public high schools located in urban areas and for graduates of private high schools. Major efforts have been made recently to improve predictive efficiency from scaling methods designed to adjust high school grades on the basis of grades earned in college and then in turn correcting college grades on the basis of high school grades. Bloom and Peters (1961) reported that by adjusting both high school and college grades for institutional variation they were able to increase the over-all correlation between school and college grades from about .50 to .77. For a sample of 23 high schools they found a median within-school correlation of .54 for unscaled high school and college grades, and with scaled grades this was raised to .77. For 13 colleges the median within-college correlation of .57 for unscaled school and college grades was raised to .68 for adjusted grades. Although these findings are important and deserve close attention, several aspects of the design of the study make the