The Effect of Family Background, Socioeconomic Status and Individual Factors on University Admission in Iran

Abstract

This paper analyzes the effect of different aspects of family background such as family income, parental education, parental job, and the socioeconomic status of parents on the university admission in Iran in 2009. The Iranian university and college admission system involves prospective students listing up to one hundred majors in order of their preference in the application. Places in universities are offered to the applicants based on both their preferences and their entrance examination results. The gathered data from the Iranian university and college applications in 2009 is analyzed using data mining methods to investigate the effects of family background variables on entrance examination grades. The results of this analysis show that parental education, parental job and the socioeconomic status of family have large effects on entrance examination grades, and as a result on university and college acceptance. The proportion of acceptance in universities for high social class families are more than the proportion of candidates in the other categories. In other words, applicants who come from higher social classes have a significantly better chance of becoming admitted in university.