Aptitude vs. merit: What matters in persistence

Admissions offices, currently discouraged from considering race, are seekin g new ways to select promising students while simultaneously achieving a ra cially diverse campus. The merit index, a new approach to this dilemma, is the differential between a student's SAT score and the average SAT score fo r the student's high school. This paper compares the ability of both the me rit index and the SAT to predict college persistence and GPA. Findings sugg est that the two predict about equally well for first-year students.