Accuracy of College Students' Perceptions of Their Sat Scores, High School and College Grade Point Averages Relative to Their Ability

Abstract

This research assessed accuracy of college students' perceptions of their grade point averages (GPA) as well as college students' accuracy in perceiving their SAT scores which, heretofore, has not been examined. Also, accuracy of college students' perceptions of GPAs and SAT scores was related to their ability. A substantial positive correlation between actual (university records) and reported (students' perceptions) GPAs should be similar to earlier work (1, 2, 4), but would also be noted for actual and reported SAT scores. Based upon previous research (1, 2, 3) that slight overestimations between reported and actual GPAs for lower adueving students, overestimations between perceived and actual GPAs were expected for lower achieving students and also between perceived and actual SATs. Data were analyzed for lower (below the median) and hlgher (at or above the median) achievers, men vs women, and sophomore and freshman college students totaling 313 of the 534 students who returned questionnaires containing additional demographic data for another study administered in three residence halls of this moderate size university. Present results support previously observed positive correlauons between perceived and actual GPAs (range .70 to .88, p s . 0 0 1 ) and added that correlations between perceived and actual SAT scores were high and positive (range .74 to 2 5 , P S ,001). Also, instead of finding only a slight tendency for lower achieving college students to overestimate GPAs, this research yielded 25 of 36 significant ( p ~ .05) overestimations of GPAs and SATs by both higher and lower achieving college students whether they were men or women, freshmen or sophomores. Generally greater overestimations were noted for men than for women and for sophomores more than for freshmen. Two anomahes of these patterns surfaced. One was that college freshmen overestimated their high school GPAs more than the sophomores and the other anomaly was that both male and female high achievers underrather than overestimated their SAT Mathematics results. This research provides further evidence that researchers are at risk when they rely upon college students' perceptions of past achievements. Research along these lines should be conducted to assess the perceptual accuracy of juniors and seniors and also for other information college students, freshmen through seniors, are asked to report.