Hillsdale College seniors scored in the 99th-100th percentile of college students nationwide in a national standardized exam.
In the second year the college has administered the Educational Testing Service Proficiency Profile, the 50 seniors from Hillsdale who took the exam earned an average total score of 482.4 of 500 points, nearly two points higher than last year’s seniors, and 35 points higher than the national average of 447.1. The results provide the college with data on students’ growth and the college’s academic results, Director of Institutional Research George Allen said.
Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn said he wasn’t surprised the scores of students at the college surpassed the national average.
“Our curriculum is arranged according to principles much older than testing of this type, which makes it curious that we should excel on this test,” Arnn said in an email. “In another way, it is not curious: When intelligent and inspired students and faculty work hard together, marvels unfold.”
The exam is akin to a college-level SAT and tests students in the skill areas of critical thinking, reading, writing, and math as well as in the context-based areas of humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Hillsdale improved its scores in every subject, except reading and social sciences. More than 130,000 students participated in the exams nationwide.
Senior Kimberly Deichmann said her biggest motivation for taking the exam was the $25 Amazon gift card given to those who participated.
“I didn’t think it was that hard,” Deichmann said, “It was pretty similar to other standardized tests I’ve taken like the ACT or the GRE.”
Allen said the proficiency profile is part of the college’s revision of its general educational assessment of students’ educational growth over their four years at the college. Previous assessments were internally produced, while the proficiency profile allows the school administration to compare students at Hillsdale with those at other institutions.
“Our previously developed methods and standards internally demonstrated that students were growing in their capacity for thinking and writing,” Allen said. “But this adds something we didn’t have before, which is validation against externally developed standards.”
Allen said Hillsdale’s sample of 50 seniors is representative of the whole senior class and fair to compare against the scores from other institutions. Hillsdale’s 50 exam participants had GPAs ranging from below 3.0 to nearly 4.0 with an average of 3.47. At fall convocation, the class of 2017 had an average GPA of 3.34.
“We did consider that only the academically best students take the test, but what we’ve shown that the average GPA of our sample size matches the average GPA of the senior body as a whole,” Allen said.
In January 2018, representatives of the Higher Learning Commission, which grants the college its accreditation, will visit the college. As a part of Hillsdale’s reaccreditation process, the representatives will look at the college’s general educational assessment.
“Changes to general education assessment will be a topic of conversation. I certainly don’t anticipate there being any problem,” Allen said. “In the past the Higher Learning Commission has examined how we did general education assessment, and they made minor recommendations, which we adopted.”
