Usage of the Secondary School Admission Test (SSAT) at St. Andrew\u27s school as a predictor of academic success

The purpose of this quantitative study is to replicate and advance Kiley & Gable’s (2013) work in examining the empirical relationship between SSAT scores and academic outcomes. Data is used relating to students accepted and enrolled in 9th grade at St. Andrew’s School—a private elite boarding school—in the Fall of 2010 and Fall of 2011. This study tests the null hypothesis that there is no relationship between SSAT scores and end-of-grade GPA at St. Andrew’s School at the end of ninth grade primarily, and at the end of tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades secondarily. The relationship between SSAT scores and PSAT and SAT scores are also examined with the latter two standardized measures used to determine and evaluate college readiness. Descriptive, correlation, and regression analysis are used to test those hypotheses and examine these relationships. The regression analysis allowed for admission factors, in addition to SSAT scores, to be controlled with SSAT scores as the predictor variable. Study findings indicate that the SSAT does indeed correlate with academic performance for end-of-grade GPA, PSAT, and SAT outcomes,. This correlation is moderate for end-of-grade GPA, strong for standardized measures of college readiness, and statistically significant at p \u3c .05 for both outcome domains. However the shared variation among these outcomes is moderate for end-of-grade GPA and strong for standardized measures of college readiness. Specifically, the correlation between end of ninth grade GPA’s and SSAT Total (r = .48, r2 = .23, p \u3c .01) is not nearly as large as admission officers presume or imagine in practice during the admission process. The SSAT Total is a stronger predictor of PSAT (r = .77, r2 = .59, p \u3c .01) and SAT (r = .71, r 2 = .50, p \u3c .01) in comparison to academic performance as measured by end of ninth grade GPA or GPA at the end of any other higher grade in high school