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abstract

There is a great deal of policy interest in reducing college dropout rates, increasing graduation rates, and improving labor market outcomes. To this end, individual colleges and state university systems use high school grade point averages and class rankings in an effort to offer admission and scholarships to students who are most likely to achieve long-run success. However, a significant fraction of students exhibit steep positive or negative performance trends during high school. This study shows that academic performance in later grades is given no greater weight in admissions but is the best predictor of college and labor market outcomes, greatly exceeding prior grades and entrance exam scores. Placing greater weight on later grades and extending application deadlines to allow the consideration of 12th grade performance is shown to significantly alter which students are admitted to college and to improve their expected long-run outcomes. Importantly, weighting recent performance does not appear to affect college diversity. Evidence is presented that the predictive power of later grades is driven primarily by students who experience large negative performance trajectories during high school.

6. Conclusion

The use of overall grade point averages is ubiquitous for determining access to college. Guaranteed admission policies explicitly use class rankings and individual colleges and universities use GPAs at their own discretion. Further, many colleges, universities, and scholarship organizations have eligibility rules based on overall GPAs. However, the empirical evidence suggests that performance in later grades is more predictive of success in college and the labor market than performance in 9th and 10th grades. Students who exhibit their best performances as high school juniors and seniors are less likely to drop out and are more likely to graduate on time than students with identical GPAs but whose best performances occurred as freshmen or sophomores. Examining the predictive nature of trajectories and non-academic courses suggests that persistent changes in effort provide at least a partial explanation for this phenomenon. The results have important implications for policy. Distributing admissions slots and financial support in a way that places greater weight on performance in later grades would result in the selection of students who are more likely to succeed. Further, abstracting from competition across colleges, changing deadlines to allow the consideration of more grades from students’ senior years would result in the selection of stronger candidates. Of note is that for the population examined, disaggregated GPAs by grade level are the dominant predictor of college completion and labor market success, exceeding the contribution of entrance exam scores. Further, switching to a system that places greater weight on performance in later years does not appear to negatively affect diversity, as minority students do not exhibit disproportionately negative performance trends during high school.