Predictions of Academic Performance in Graduate and Professional School

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Using a model followed in earlier research, corre lations were computed between undergraduate and graduate grade-point averages as well as between these and standard graduate and professional school tests. Approximately 1200 law school stu dents constituted a professional school sample and another 1200 students in mathematics, physics, and chemistry constituted a graduate school sample. Earlier findings were replicated. In addition, it is shown that both graduate and professional school grades form simplex matrices and that early grades are more highly predictable from aptitude tests than later grades. There is evidence for a single simplex matrix extending through the four under graduate and three post-graduate years only in the law school sample. There are two separate simplex matrices for the two levels in the graduate school sample. Correlations between test scores and under graduate grades are biased to very low values in the professional school sample by a compensatory selec tion system, but both aptitude and achievement tests are clearly more highly correlated with fresh- man than with senior grades in the graduate school sample. In this sample, however, the advanced test in the discipline is more highly correlated with first year graduate grades than with senior grades. These data suggest that the first year in a new aca demic learning situation represents a greater intel lectual challenge than subsequent years.