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Most of the Admissions Formula Elements Are Useful in Predicting Outcomes at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA); Selection Panel Score Is the One Exception

• SAT, academic composite, leadership composite, and selection composite are significant predictors of failure to graduate for academic reasons, graduation versus choosing a career change, grade point average (GPA), military performance average (MPA), and overall performance average (OPA).
• In the overwhelming majority of the analyses, selection panel score was significant, but in the wrong direction: Higher scores were associated with a lower likelihood of success in many of the outcomes.

The Analyses Showed Interesting Differences Depending on Which Outcome Was Predicted

• The admissions factors do a much better job of predicting GPA and OPA than they do of predicting MPA. They also do a better job of predicting graduation versus failure for academic reasons than they do of predicting graduation versus choosing a career change.
• For predicting failure for academic reasons, the academic composite should be weighted more heavily than leadership composite, and the selection panel score should be excluded. For predicting graduating versus choosing a career change, the results suggest weighting leadership composite slightly less than the academic composite.
• Academic composite should be weighted twice that of leadership composite for predicting MPA and nine times that of the leadership composite for predicting OPA and GPA.
• For predicting promotions to O-4, O-5, and O-6, USAFA outcomes (GPA, MPA, and OPA) were much better predictors than the admissions factors, and MPA was a slightly better predictor than USAFA GPA.