Determining Scholastic Aptitude Test as Predictors of Academic Achievement on Students of Islamic School in Indonesia

Selection of new students is based on student potential. Research on the potential of the cognitive abilities and records of Islamic school students’ academic achievement in Indonesia are still very rare. This paper presents empirical data about the predictive ability of a test of scholastic ability for the academic achievement of Islamic school students in Indonesia. This research used a quantitative approach with a survey method that used the Ministry of Religious Affair (MORA)’s Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and Students’ scores on 5 subjects in the first semester. The subjects of this study were 9609 Islamic school students selected using a quota sampling technique that represented Islamic schools in Indonesia. The results of this study indicate that all of the SAT subsets, those are verbal, numerical, analytical and spatial, are significant predictors of academic achievement of Islamic school students in Indonesia. The empirical analytical sub-test is the strongest predictor of Islamic school students’ academic scores. While, the analytical sub-test has very significant correlation with the academic score on Islamic Studies subjects. Meanwhile the verbal sub-test has a very strong relationship with academic achievement in Arabic and English subjects, the numerical sub-test very strongly relates to academic achievement in science and mathematics subjects. Among the four SAT subtests, the spatial sub-test had the lowest correlation with all subjects