Pre-enrollment factors and academic performance of first-year science students at a Nigerian university: a multivariate analysis

Abstract

Multi-group discriminant analysis is used to identify the pre-enrollment demographic and academic factors which best separate out the success classes in the first-year examinations of science students at a Nigerian university. Each science-based faculty is separately analysed to control for faculty differences in all the variables used. The pre-eminent predictor of success is performance in the specialist subjects of the university’s matriculation examination. Other variables selected for use in the discriminant functions depend on the faculty group. Misallocation rates are generally low and, exept for one faculty group, discrimination is uni-dimensional.