Applicant’s Profile Study For Improving Undergraduate Enrollment In The Engineering School Of The University Of Puerto Rico At MayagÜez

Abstract

In recent years, the undergraduate enrollment population of the Engineering School at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez exhibits a regional bias. In general, at our campus of the university enrollment has decreased slightly. This work establishes a comparison among the profiles of the admitted-registered, the admitted not registered and the not admitted groups. This comparison is based on demographic, high school academic performance, entrance examination test scores, and financial data of the students applying to our institution. In particular, differences among the profiles are of interest. The objective of the study is to identify areas in which the admission office of the institution can direct its efforts to improve the profile of our undergraduate engineering enrollment. Profile of the First Year Engineering Classes Data of applicants to the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez (UPRM) was obtained for the past four academic years starting in 2001-02 through 2004-05. The data included all applicants to the four faculties: Engineering, Arts and Sciences (divided into science departments and humanities departments. Our main interest was the engineering candidates. Of all the applicants to engineering (as their first, second or third choice) 35.8% were admitted and registered, 58.7% were not admitted, and 5.5% were admitted but declined registration at our engineering programs. This information is portrayed in Figure 1 showing that in general terms around 4 of 10 applicants is admitted and registers in our engineering programs. In a previous study performed by the authors, a profile of the entering engineering classes of the College of Engineering of UPRM during the period of 1990-2003 was developed. The profile included variables such as: gender, school type (public or private), geographic location of high school, scores from five College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) tests, high school grade point average (GPA), and the first university year GPA .