Admissions test

Test scores are a significant piece of information used in college, graduate school, and professional school admissions decisions. Many question how much influence they play in admissions decisions, especially for diverse students. Researchers at Berkeley, Marjorie Shultz and Shelton Zedeck (http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/LSACREPORTfinal-12.pdf) have recently suggested, that at least in the case of law school admissions, that there may be other better predictors of lawyer success than the LSAT exam. They argue that the LSAT is predictive of performance in the first year of law school but does not predict as well for lawyer success. In contrast, biographical data, personality measures, and situational judgment tasks have been found to predict lawyer success and not result in racial achievement gaps. Tufts University is also investigating different admission decisions paradigms (see http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/07/11/tufts)

Of course, this line of research brings up many questions for admissions overall. First and foremost, how to we define graduate success? Do we replace traditional tests like the LSAT with other tests like personality measures which will likely motivate questions about non-racial forms of discrimination? Should the movement be to supplement our admissions data so as not to rely so heavily on standardized tests? How much of our reliance on traditional tests such as the GRE or LSAT reflect the ease and cost involved in their widespread delivery as compared to the alternatives mentioned?