No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Student selection and performance in higher education: admission exams vs. high school scores
Abstract
In many countries, students are selected into higher education institutions based on their achievement at high school, measured by scores given by their teachers and obtained on final national exams. This paper compares these two measures in terms of their ability to predict students' success in higher education. Accounting for sample selection problems, we find that the high school score is a stronger predictor of students' performance at university. However, the score obtained in the mathematics national exam still adds information. We conclude that both measures are complementary, a result that is relevant for university recruitment and selection policies.
... Although findings, in the literature, regarding the role of instructional setting and demographic factors such as gender in the literature are variable, findings regarding the role of previous academic performance on students' performance at all levels has been consistent (Dika, 2012;Gooding et al., 1990;Manganelli, et al., 2019;Silva et al., 2020). This pattern is such that previous academic performance is a positive correlate and an important predictor of current academic performance. ...
... Ultimately, we found that the most important predictor of students' academic performance during this period was their prior academic performance. This finding regarding previous academic achievement is consistent with much of the extant literature where previous academic achievement is an important influence on the current academic achievement of students across all levels of education (Abdullah & Mirzah, 2019;Bahri Yusoff et al, 2013;Blackman et al., 2007;Blažev, et al, 2017;Dika, 2012;Manganelli, et al., 2019;Mash et al., 2019;Silva et al., 2020). In combination, these findings suggest that the instructional setting adjustments made at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic did not alter prior patterns of academic performance among undergraduate college students. ...
Our goal in the current study was to identify the degree to which instructional setting (remote versus traditional) predicted students’ academic achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic. A matched sample of data from 194 undergraduate students who were continuously enrolled at a private university in the southeastern United States from the spring semester of 2020 through the spring semester of 2021 was selected for this study. Data from students enrolled remotely across 37 majors were matched by sex, enrollment status, and Spring 2020 GPA. Our findings showed that neither instructional setting, students’ sex, nor the number of hours they attempted were important predictors of students’ academic performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the academic performance of students enrolled remotely on average remained unchanged from Spring 2020 through Spring 2021. Incidentally, our results revealed that the preceding academic performance was the only important predictor of students' academic achievement during this period. This finding confirms former research on the role that previous performance plays in the academic performance of undergraduate students.
... The government-sponsored track prioritizes students who show academic excellence and specialise in less mainstream elds of study. Therefore, the admission process is restricted to individuals with the highest scores on standardised national tests (Silva et al., 2020). As numerous research studies have pointed out, academic performance during high school is a crucial factor in determining eligibility for merit-based scholarships. ...
Attempts to expand the availability of higher education frequently come with exorbitant expenses, heightening the gap between privileged and underprivileged students. Distributing scholarships to the higher education sub-sector is commonly seen as a viable means of promoting educational success, expanding accessibility, and addressing equity issues in higher education. Nevertheless, the problem of equity remains a long-lasting and unfair obstacle in Cambodia's higher education sub-sector, despite the presence of a national scholarship policy. This is based on the straightforward fact that there is no fundamental metric to evaluate the inclusion and equity of scholarship distribution. Moreover, the scholarship selection procedures may be inefficient, contrary to what policy documents indicate, resulting in students from lower-income households being left behind in the opportunities they were promised. Therefore, this study is the first ever attempt to profile Cambodian higher education scholarships from a socio-economic viewpoint that discusses how family background impacts the likelihood of students from low-income households accessing social investments, such as scholarships. All analyses point out that opportunities are heavily skewed towards the wealthy, and therefore incorporating this understanding will help Cambodian universities better allocate scholarships to boost the country’s human capital and improve university representation from lower economically-secure communities.
... The tightness of the Olympic class recruitment process has implications for the achievements of the students of MAN 2 Malang City. This is in line with past research that in many countries, students are selected for higher education based on their achievements, measured by the scores given by their teachers and obtained on national final exams [28]. They also stated that teacher assessment and national exam results at the previous level are two measures that can be used as student recruitment policies. ...
span lang="EN-US">The scientific literacy of madrasa students currently shows a very proud trend. This is shown by the achievements in the field of science obtained in various science competitions. Scientific achievements are obtained through a long and continuous process, including through science coaching. By using qualitative methods, this study aimed to describe the science coaching model at State Madrasah Aliyah (MAN) 2 Malang City. The results showed that the science coaching model in MAN 2 Malang City includes four main aspects. First, strengthening the management aspect through establishing the olympic and research program and fulfilling adequate infrastructure. Second, strengthening students’ concepts and abilities through matriculation and programmed guidance. Third, empowering the olympic class and the olympic club through a rigorous selection and the implementation of periodic tests and tryouts. Fourth, synergy with other parties, such as Ma’had Al-Qalam, state universities, and National Achievement Center ( Pusat Prestasi Nasional /Puspresnas). The success of scientific development cannot be separated from the interest and motivation of students to learn, adequate infrastructure, a conducive learning environment, and the support of the madrasa principal, committee, and parents.</span
... Grades are the most important selection criterion for further study in Sweden (SOU 2021:72, p. 23). While a well-designed grading system has proven to be a better instrument for admission to higher education than standardized admissions tests (Silva et al. 2020), a less well-designed grading system creates problems. An ever-so-genuine desire among parents to choose a school where their children learn as much as possible must necessarily coexist with the desire to choose a school that gives the impression of providing the best education possible by handing out high grades. ...
... In general, the universities select their students based on their high school knowledge (Silva et al., 2020). In some European countries, an important weight in the admission exam is given to aspects related to the student's personalitymotivational essay, recommendations letters from high school teachers in France for example, or extracurricular interests, volunteering activities in London etc. ...
This paper empirically evaluates the relationship between the university admission process and the study success of online students. We investigate data from fully accredited higher education courses over multiple cohorts, yielding a sample of 502 students from both Bachelor- and Master-studies. We link rankings from 3 test procedures, an interview, a resume analysis, and an aptitude test, with grade achievements and successful course completion. We find that all procedures predict grades, but only resume analysis has a robust relationship with successful course completion. Crucially, the predictive power of the resume analysis depends on controlling for a student’s age. Our results thus call for nuance in evaluating and interpreting admission scores when allocating seats in online education.KeywordsAdmission procedureOnline studentsPredictive powerAdmission interviewStudy success
X Simpósio de Organização e Gestão Escolar: A gestão da incerteza na Educação: (des)continuidades e desafios
Universidade de Aveiro
This article to evaluate the implementation of Student Admission (PPDB) by Zoning System in achieving the vision of educational equality, a case study in the South Tambun Region. Initially, the government issued Permendikbud number 51 of 2018 regarding PPDB BY Zoning System to remove the stigma of favorite and non-favorite schools and facilitate supervision of students. This research uses a qualitative approach, then the concept from James S. Coleman through his book Equality of Educational Opportunity (1967) describes the principles and concepts of equality of educational opportunity distribution in numerous ways. Coleman's study is used to assess the availability of equality of educational opportunity for various groups of students in Indonesia through a zoning system that has a vision of social equality for the community. Based on the results of the study, the zoning system has been running procedurally. However, the goal of equality of educational opportunities is hampered by the limitation of the old value-oriented paradigm and the consequences of new inequalities.
The purpose of this paper is to study whether Swedish admission policies successful in selecting the best-performing students. The Swedish universities select students based on two different instruments, which each form a separate admission group. A regression model is recommended to estimate the achievement differences for the marginally accepted students between the admission groups and is applied to a sample of 9024 Swedish university entrants in four different fields of education. Marginally accepted students in the group selected by school grades on average perform better than students accepted by an admission test, suggesting that a small reallocation of study positions towards the grade admission group may increase overall academic achievement. However, the achievement difference appears to vary concerning university programme selectivity. We found that increasing selection by grades in less competitive programmes would improve overall achievement, while we do not find any effect for highly competitive programmes.
There is increasing attention on study abroad programmes in higher education. However, there is little evidence on how participation might impact students’ academic performance on return. Using administrative data from Ireland and a range of regression models and matching estimators, we find no independent association between study abroad and subsequent academic performance on average. However, we do find some evidence of heterogeneity in the relationship, notably across the performance distribution and for language students. In particular, study abroad is independently associated with better (worse) performance for higher (lower) performing students and in language subjects.
There is evidence that teacher judgements and assessments of primary school pupils can be systematically biased. This paper tests the proposal that stereotyping plays a part in creating these judgement inequalities and is instrumental in achievement variation according to income-level, gender, special educational needs status, ethnicity and spoken language. Using 2008 data for almost 5,000 pupils from the Millennium Cohort Study, it demonstrates biases in teachers’ average ratings of sample pupils’ reading and maths ‘ability and attainment’ which correspond to every one of these key characteristics. Findings go on to suggest that stereotypes according to each of income-level, gender, special educational needs status and ethnicity all play some part in forming these biases. The paper strengthens the evidence that stereotyping of pupils may contribute to assessment and thereby attainment inequalities, and concludes that an increased focus on tackling this process may lead to greater parity and a narrowing of gaps.
Fairness in access to HE is unarguably a subject of paramount importance. Wherever a student’s secondary school scores are relevant for access to HE, grade inflation practices may jeopardize fair access. Pressures for high grading are common in the context of educational consumerism and competition between schools and students. However, they are not equally distributed across different types of schools, given that they have distinct relationships with the State and the market, and work with distinct populations. Specifically, the schools that are more subject to market pressures (namely private schools) are, in principle at least, the ones with more incentives to inflate their students’ grades. This paper presents an empirical study based on a large, 11 years database on scores in upper secondary education in Portugal, probing for systematic differences in grade inflation practices by four types of schools: public schools, government-dependent private schools, independent (fee-paying) private schools, and specially funded public schools in disadvantaged areas (TEIP schools). More than 3 million valid cases were analysed. Our results clearly show that independent private schools inflate their students’ scores when compared to the other types of schools. They also show that this discrepancy is higher where scores matter most in competition for HE access. This means that—usually wealthier—students from private independent schools benefit from an unfair advantage in the competition for the scarce places available in public higher education. We conclude discussing possible solutions to deal with such an important issue.
Students' trajectories into university are often uniquely dependent on school qualifications though these alone are limited as predictors of academic potential. This study endorses this, examining associations between school grades, school type, school performance, socio-economic deprivation, neighbourhood participation, sex and academic achievement at a British university. Consistent with past research, large entry-level differences between students are generally narrowed by final year at university. Students from the most deprived areas performed less well than more affluent students. Asian and black students performed less well than white students. Female students performed better than their male counterparts. Contrasting with past research, though school performance was positively associated with entry grades, students from low-performing schools were more likely to achieve the highest degree classifications. Additionally, independent school students performed less well than comprehensive school students at final year despite entering with higher grades. These variations exemplify how patterns observed nationally may differ between universities.
Over the last three decades there have been in Portugal a quite huge public investment in the school system and the implementation of an effective compulsory education. These changes came along with the democratization of school experience. Moreover the increase in the number of students in higher education is a national goal that have been pursued by education policy. Families, with fewer children, the perception of higher studies as a way to move up in the social ladder and better life conditions have an active behaviour on behalf of their children education. However, in spite of all the government and parents investment in children education, school failure is a major problem that affects all levels of education. At university level school failure affects mainly undergraduate students in their first year of studies1. This problem is a major concern for those involved in higher education political definition and this is why it becomes a research field of much interest. This paper intends to shed some light on the determinants of academic performance of undergraduate students of the School of Economics and Management in their first year of studies. Following Dollado and Morales (2007) we will measure success in academic performance using the exam´s marks in three 1st year subjects with decreasing degrees of mathematical complexity, Maths, Economy 1 and Management and Economic History. In this paper we go further than Dollado and Morales (2007) since, besides type of school, specialization track at high school and marks obtained at the university entry-exam, we study the role of individual characteristics, family socio-economic background and pre-university school trajectory on the academic performance. We put an emphasis on the effect of transitions from public\private or private\public schools and from in-home to out-home.
The authors investigated the assessment and grading practices of over 900 Grades 3-5 teachers representing urban, suburban, and rural schools. Teachers indicated the extent to which they used various factors to grade students, the types of assessments used, the cognitive level of assessments, and the grades awarded. Teachers appeared to conceptualize 6 major factors when they graded students; they placed the greatest weight on academic performance and academic-enabling behaviors, such as effort and improvement, and much less emphasis on homework, comparisons with other students, grade distributions of other teachers, and borderline cases. The teachers used 3 types of assessments—constructed-response, objective, and teacher-made major examinations; they differentiated between recall and higher level cognitive skills. However, there were few relationships between assessment and grade level, subject matter assessed, and grades awarded. Results are discussed in light of other research, indicating that teachers use a “hodgepodge” of factors when assessing and grading students.
With the increasing diversity of students attending university, there is a growing interest in the factors predicting academic performance. This study is a prospective investigation of the academic, psychosocial, cognitive, and demographic predictors of academic performance of first year Australian university students. Questionnaires were distributed to 197 first year students 4 to 8 weeks prior to the end of semester exams and overall grade point averages were collected at semester completion. Previous academic performance was identified as the most significant predictor of university performance. Integration into university, self efficacy, and employment responsibilities were also predictive of university grades. Identifying the factors that influence academic performance can improve the targeting of interventions and support services for students at risk of academic problems.
This paper: i) estimates the effect that going to a better school has on students' academic achievement, and ii) explores whether this intervention induces behavioral responses on the part of children, their parents, and the school system. For the first task, we exploit almost 2,000 regression discontinuity quasi-experiments observed in the context of Romania's high school educational system. For the second, we use data from a specialized survey of children, parents, teachers and principals that we implemented in 59 Romanian towns. The first finding is that students do benefit from access to higher achieving schools and tracks within schools. A second set of results suggests that the stratification of schools by quality in general, and the opportunity to attend a better school in particular, result in significant behavioral responses on the part of teachers, parents, and students. Although we do not expect the magnitude or even the direction of these responses to hold everywhere, their existence has a number of implications for evaluation, particularly since some of them change over time, and some would seem to be relevant only once interventions reach a certain scale.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
Do teachers actually follow the grading practices recommended by researchers and textbook authors? where are the discrepancies? What are possible explanations for such discrepancies? What is an agenda for further research on actual classroom grading practices of teachers?
Este trabajo evalúa, mediante un conjunto de modelizaciones econométricas, la influencia de las características personales, familiares y académicas del estudiante sobre diferentes medidas del output educativo (notas obtenidas en los exámenes y probabilidad de aprobar). En particular, se presta atención a la relación entre esas medidas del producto y las variables que recogen las condiciones de acceso a la Universidad (calificaciones de acceso, obtención de las primeras preferencias declaradas por el alumno, etc.). Los datos utilizados para sustentar este estudio proceden de la información individual de la cohorte de estudiantes matriculados por primera vez, durante el curso 1996/97, en la Universidad de Málaga. This paper assesses the influence of students¿ personal, family and academic characteristics on different measures of educational outcome (exam results and likelihood of passing), by using several econometric techniques. In particular, it will pay attention to the relationship between these measures of educational success and variables determining access to University (pre-university exam results, acceptance by institutions of first choice, etc.). The data used for this paper come from the individual records of the group of first time enrolled students in the University of Malaga in 1996/97.
This paper examines the determinants of gender differences in educational attainment using data for all university graduates. We find that, although women students perform better on average than their male counterparts, they are significantly less likely to obtain a first class degree. There is no evidence that this is because of differences in the types of subject male and female students study or in the institutions they attend, nor does it reflect differences in personal attributes, such as academic ability. Rather, it is differences in the way these factors affect academic achievement that give rise to gender differences in performance. Copyright 2002 by The London School of Economics and Political Science
The aim of higher education is to increase students’ knowledge. In a longitudinal panel sample of 748 students of economics, we found different patterns of knowledge development and learning (positive, negative, retained and zero), which provide us with much more differentiat-ed insight into growth than the overall knowledge test scores.
In many countries entrance to Higher Education is determined by the performance of students in secondary school and/or the scores obtained in national exams. The relative weight of these two scores on the admission decision is a relevant policy topic, given its implication on who is admitted to university. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relative predictive power of these two measures on the academic performance of students in Higher Education. It makes use of a dataset of Bachelor students from Portuguese Higher Education institutions with detailed information about their characteristics and past achievement results. The measure of academic achievement considered is the Bachelor's final average score. The main finding is that the scores given by teachers in secondary school are better predictors of subsequent performance than the access exam scores. The relevance of factors like working status, social support and gender vary with the reputation of the degree and the type of Higher Education institution, university versus polytechnic. A noteworthy result is that the added predictive contribution of parents' education is always negligible when past success measures are already taken into account.
Students receive abundant information about their educational performance, but how this information affects future educational-investment decisions is not well understood. Increasingly, results from state-mandated standardized tests are an important source of information. Students receive a score and a label that summarizes their performance on these tests. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we find persistent effects of earning a more positive label on the collegegoing decisions of urban, low-income students. These findings are important not only for understanding students' educational-investment decisions and the consequences of state testing practices but also for researchers using the regression-discontinuity design. © 2016 by the Board of Regents of the University ofWisconsin System.
Focusing on high school grade-point average (HSGPA) in college admissions may foster ethnic diversity and communicate the importance of high school performance. It has further been claimed that HSGPA is the best single predictor of college grades and that it is more equitable than test scores because of a smaller association with socioeconomic status (SES). Recent findings, however, suggest that HSPGA's seemingly smaller correlation with SES is a methodological artifact. In addition, it tends to produce systematic errors in the prediction of college grades. Although supplementing HSGPA with a high-school resource index can mitigate these errors, determining whether to include such an index in admissions decisions must take into account the institutional mission and the potential diversity impact.
Based on Tinto's (1993) model of academic persistence, this study investigated the relationship of loneliness, social support, and living arrangements with academic persistence decisions of 401 college freshmen. Participants completed a series of standardized instruments during class time. Social support was negatively related to loneliness and positively related to academic persistence decisions. Less loneliness and more social support predicted more positive persistence decisions. Neither social support nor loneliness was related to GPA; however, freshmen living on campus had higher GPAs than those living off campus. Women perceived receiving more social support from both friends and family than did men. These results are discussed in light of what might be done to influence greater persistence.
It has been widely claimed that UK students from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds but nevertheless having the potential to benefit from a degree programme are being denied higher education places because of their relatively poor paper qualifications. As a consequence, the claim continues, students from independent schools have an advantage in the competition for such places. Universities have responded to such claims, and incentives from the government to do so, by introducing widening participation programmes, but very little research has been done which explores whether students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are admitted to elite universities perform as well as their counterparts with better entry qualifications. Using a large data set from one university, this article explores performance by students at A‐level and their first and final university years. Students from independent schools performed better at A‐level than those from state schools, but not at their university examinations, other things being equal.
Why do grades and test scores often differ? A framework of possible differences is proposed in this article. An approximation of the framework was tested with data on 8,454 high school seniors from the National Education Longitudinal Study. Individual and group differences in grade versus test performance were substantially reduced by focusing the two measures on similar academic subjects, correcting for grading variations and unreliability, and adding teacher ratings and other information about students. Concurrent prediction of high school average was thus increased from 0.62 to 0.90; differential prediction in eight subgroups was reduced to 0.02 letter-grades. Grading variation was a major source of discrepancy between grades and test scores. Other major sources were teacher ratings and Scholastic Engagement, a promising organizing principle for understanding student achievement. Engagement was defined by three types of observable behavior: employing school skills, demonstrating initiative, and avoiding competing activities. While groups varied in average achievement, group performance was generally similar on grades and tests. Major factors in achievement were similarly constituted and similarly related from group to group. Differences between grades and tests give these measures complementary strengths in high-stakes assessment. If artifactual differences between the two measures are not corrected, common statistical estimates of validity and fairness are unduly conservative.
From a unique data set identifying the school attended prior to university for a full cohort of UK university students; we examine the determinants of final degree classification. We exploit the detailed school-level information and focus on the influence of school characteristics; such as school type; on subsequent performance of students at university. We estimate that; on average; a male (female) graduate who attended an Independent school is 6.5 (5.4) percentage points less likely to obtain a ‘good’ degree than is a student who attended an LEA (that is; state-sector) school; ceteris paribus. We also find considerable variation around this average figure across different Independent schools. We find that; for males; the variation in the probability of attaining a ‘good’ degree according to the Independent school attended can largely be explained by the level of school fees.
Racial segregation is often blamed for some of the achievement gap between blacks and whites. We study the effects of school and neighborhood segregation on the relative SAT scores of black students across different metropolitan areas, using large microdata samples for the 1998–2001 test cohorts. Our models include detailed controls for the family background of individual test-takers, school-level controls for selective participation in the test, and city-level controls for racial composition, income, and region. We find robust evidence that the black–white test score gap is higher in more segregated cities. Holding constant family background and other factors, a shift from a highly segregated city to a nearly integrated city closes about one-quarter of the raw black–white gap in SAT scores. Specifications that distinguish between school and neighborhood segregation suggest that neighborhood segregation has a consistently negative impact while school segregation has no independent effect, though we cannot reject equality of the two effects. Additional tests indicate that much of the effect of neighborhood segregation operates through neighbors' incomes, not through race per se. Data on enrollment in honors courses suggest that within-school segregation increases when schools are more highly integrated, potentially offsetting the benefits of school desegregation and accounting for our findings.
Test-based accountability rests on the assumption that accountability for scores on tests will provide needed incentives for teachers to improve student performance. Evidence shows, however, that simple test-based accountability can generate perverse incentives and seriously inflated scores. This paper discusses the logic of achievement tests, issues that arise in using them as proxy indicators of educational quality, and the mechanism underlying the inflation of scores. It ends with suggestions, some speculative, for improving the incentives faced by teachers by modifying systems of student assessment and combining them with numerous other measures, many of which are more subjective than are test scores.
We show that within the Chicago Public Schools, both the introduction of NCLB in 2002 and the introduction of similar district-level reforms in 1996 generated noteworthy increases in reading and math scores among students in the middle of the achievement distribution but not among the least academically advantaged students. The stringency of proficiency requirements varied among the programs implemented for different grades in different years, and our results suggest that changes in proficiency requirements induce teachers to shift more attention to students who are near the current proficiency standard. (c) 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
While there is an extensive literature on intergenerational transmission of economic outcomes (education, health and income for example), many of the pathways through which these outcomes are transmitted are not as well understood. We address this deficit by analysing the relationship between socio-economic status and child outcomes in university, based on a rich and unique dataset of university students. While large socio-economic differences in academic performance exist at the point of entry into university, these differences are substantially narrowed during the period of study. Importantly, the differences across socio-economic backgrounds in university grade attainment for female students is explained by intermediating variables such as personality, risk attitudes and time preferences, and subject/college choices. However, for male students, we explain less than half of the socio-economic gradient through these same pathways. Despite the weakening socio-economic effect in grade attainment, a key finding is that large socio-economic differentials in the earnings expectations of university students persist, even when controlling for grades in addition to our rich set of controls. Our findings pose a sizable challenge for policy in this area as they suggest that equalising educational outcomes may not translate into equal labour market outcomes.
We exploit a unique data-set matching individual-level data for the 1993 cohort of UK university leavers to DfEE school-level data. We analyze the determinants of undergraduate degree performance using an ordered probit regression model, and find that degree performance is influenced positively by A-level score, positively by occupationally-ranked social class background and is significantly worse both for students who had previously attended an Independent school and for male students. We find that the significance of these effects is robust across different subsamples of the population, and we explore the variation in the magnitude of the effects. We also find that very little of the gender performance gap can be explained by gender differences in observed characteristics and that the superior performance of females is reversed only in the case of Oxbridge students. Copyright 2001 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
This paper discusses the bias that results from using nonrandomly selected samples to estimate behavioral relationships as an ordinary specification error or "omitted variables" bias. A simple consistent two stage estimator is considered that enables analysts to utilize simple regression methods to estimate behavioral functions by least squares methods. The asymptotic distribution of the estimator is derived.
The Long-Term Consequences of Teacher Discretion in Grading of High-Stakes Tests
- R Diamond
- P Persson
Diamond, R., and P. Persson. 2016. "The Long-Term Consequences of Teacher Discretion in Grading of High-Stakes Tests."
Technical Report, National Bureau of Economic Research.