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Overview

Admitted Class Evaluation Service™ (ACES) is a free online service from the College Board for colleges and universities. It helps you answer important questions about the College Board assessments you use to admit, place, and advise students at your institution.

Our expert analysis of the data you supply can serve to validate your admission and placement policies—or help you refine them.

Here are examples of questions that an ACES study can help you answer:

  • What combination and weighting of SAT scores, high school GPA, and other key factors will work best in our admission model to predict student success at my institution?
  • What test score(s) should we use for placing students into different levels of math coursework?
  • How can we quickly and easily identify students who may be at risk for not returning or completing their degrees?

The annual Validity Study research helped us to redesign our admission decisions, which led to a 12% increase in first-year retention.

—Associate vice president of enrollment management at a public four-year university

How It Works

  1. You create a secure ACES account (each user has a personal, not an institutional, account) and sign in to the ACES application.
  2. You design a study for your institution by choosing the test scores and other variables you want to analyze against a specified outcome. 
  3. You upload a file of student data that meets the requirements of the requested study.
  4. Our team runs a comprehensive analysis of the data.
  5. You get a detailed, easy-to-understand report, along with interactive graphs, that clearly explains the relationship between the variables and the outcome you chose.
  6. You use the report to inform your institution’s policies.

Learn about our seven types of study.

The reports and results are so helpful and we can’t conduct this kind of study by ourselves.

—Assistant vice president of institutional effectiveness at a private four-year university

2018 Updates

We’ve made some changes to the ACES system, including new and redesigned features and reports, to better serve our users. ACES remains free of charge to institutions.

Online portal. We’ve revamped our portal: It now offers a simplified single sign-in for all your submissions. And intuitive, easy-to-use dashboards will make it easier to design your report, submit your data, and find data you’ve already uploaded and your available previous reports.

New studies. We’ve added two new studies to our offerings. Our Retention Study looks at student retention and our Completion Study looks at student degree completion, using SAT scores as a predictor.

New features in all reports, including:

  • Interactive graphs
  • The capability to compare study results year-over-year
  • Helpful features such as flags for students at risk for not returning (for admission validity studies only)
  • Faster results—ACES reports will now be available within 20 business days of a completed study request

[I think this kind of study] is hugely critical and meaningful, especially in consideration of the rapid changes in higher education.

—Strategic planning administrator at a public four-year university

Contact Us

Questions about ACES? Contact us as 800-439-8309 or [email protected].

Related Resources

These samples show what you get with each study—a printable report and an HTML dashboard with interactive graphics.

Note: Samples for the Completion Report and the Retention Report will be posted soon. Please check back.