High School Admission Research Articles

Conditioned by the system: student selection and parental involvement in high school admissions in Taiwan

Studies using cross-country comparisons argue that the benefits of parental involvement depend on the educational setting in which it exists. However, contextual and cultural differences likely transcend the differences observed across educational systems. Instead, this study compares the educational advantages of parents’ school-based involvement across different admissions systems in a single society. I draw on the case of Taiwan, where high schools select students through both applications and exams. The findings show that parental involvement is positively associated with children’s high school placements in both admissions systems. However, students with privileged class backgrounds reap greater rewards from parental involvement in the application system than those in the exam system. The marginal effects of parental involvement in applications systems are also considerably stronger than those in exam systems. The results of direct comparisons illustrate that institutional settings critically shape the benefits students accrue from parental involvement. Conceptualizing parental involvement as a measure of cultural capital, this study highlights educational systems’ role in conditioning how cultural capital contributes to educational inequality.

An Unsupervised Learning and EDA Approach for Specialized High School Admissions

An Unsupervised Learning and EDA Approach for Specialized High School Admissions

Nuancing the narrative: understanding Asian American opposition to NYC’s selective high school admissions reform

ABSTRACT In this study, the authors conduct a qualitative analysis to examine discourses embedded in the New York City specialized public high schools’ admission reform. Undertaking Critical Discourse Analysis, the article engages with historical and contextual understandings of Asian Americans in the race-conscious admission policy to elite public high schools. The findings reveal themes of racism and anti-Asian American discrimination, meritocracy and colorblindness, and systematic issues and segregation swirling around the policy debate. The authors aim to illuminate the competing values, ideologies, and fundamental issues shaping the epistemological conversation of race, power, and education equity. These discourses shed light on the challenges, benefits, and limitations of the current approach to diversifying elite public high schools in the United States.

Apply and improve the association rules in predicting national high school admission scores to Nha Trang University

The paper discusses how the traditional method of association rule mining based on user-defined minimum support and confidence can result in either too many or too few association rules. This could lead to valuable information being missed or redundant rules being generated, which is not practical and can be costly to implement. The paper proposes an improvement of DARIT algorithm to mine association rules without redundancy and applies it to data from previous years of National High School Exams to Nha Trang University. The goal is to use the results to build an admissions counseling system that can help students increase their chances of being admitted to universities based on their exam results. Keywords: Data mining, Association rule, Missing value, DARIT, consulting system.

성취평가제 확대 적용에 따른 대입전형 평가의 방향

Objectives The purpose of this study is to explore the problems of the standard-based assessment, which is ex-panded in the high school credit system and the 2022 revised curriculum, and the direction of desirable college admission operation.
 Methods To this end, a survey was conducted on high school teachers and university admissions officers, and the questionnaire was composed of a background variable and a total of 14 questions in 4 areas and was prepared on a 5-point Likert scale. For the collected data, descriptive statistics, t-test, cross-analysis, and one-way var-iance analysis were conducted. In-depth interviews with experts (two high school teachers and admissions offi-cers each) were conducted to secure the validity and reliability of the survey results.
 Results First, the expansion of the standard-based assessment will reduce the student sub-curricular screening and expand the comprehensive student sub-curricular screening. Second, when the standard-based assess-ment is expanded, the boundary between the student sub-curricular screening and the student sub-curricular screening is blurred, and it is necessary to introduce qualitative evaluation in the student sub-curricular screening. Third, admissions officers were more negatively aware of the operation of subject selection and grade inflation according to student wishes than teachers, and teachers preferred to introduce or strengthen interview evaluation and admissions officers preferred to introduce or strengthen the minimum academic standards for the CSAT as a way to compensate for the difficulty of discrimination in student sub-curricular evaluation.
 Conclusions When applying the standard-based assessment requires additional factors, specific methods, spe-cific methods should be applied depending on the characteristics of the universities of universities should be ap-plied according to the characteristics of universities. In order to Evaluation of Desirable University Admissions high school life records, and universities need to strengthen the competitiveness of the evaluation of the evaluation.

특성화고 예비신입생 및 학부모의 고교 진학 준비과정 분석: 서울 지역을 중심으로

The purpose of this study is to explore ways to improve vocational high school admissions support. Accordingly, in order to analyze the experiences of vocational high school students in the high school preparation process, a survey was conducted targeting vocational high school freshmen and their parents. The main results of the study are as follows.
 First, many students considered their career path and aptitude at the stage of deciding to go on to vocational high school, and some were concerned about society's negative views. Second, awareness of the support policy for university admissions to vocational high schools was high, but awareness of other support policies was found to be low. Third, the motivation for entering vocational high school was often consistent with the purpose of establishing vocational high schools, there were some students who decided to enroll because of their grades or college admission. Fourth, in the case of vocational high school admission and career guidance, middle school and vocational high school teachers were found to be of great help, but satisfaction with middle schools career guidance was relatively low. Fifth, in terms of vocational high school admission information, the need for continuous provision of information and the difficulty in collecting specific information for major or admission preparation were confirmed. Based on the research results, improvement methods were presented to communicate a consistent message to create a positive image of vocational high schools, strengthen advancement and career guidance training for middle school and vocational high school teachers, provide specific major information for admission support.

Full-time schools and educational trajectories: Evidence from high-stakes exams

This paper estimates the effects of extending the school day during elementary school on students’ educational outcomes later in life. The analysis takes place in the context of a large-scale program introduced in 2007 that extended the school day from 4.5 to 8 h in Mexico City’s metropolitan area. The identification strategy leverages cohort-by-cohort variation in full-time enrollment in elementary schools. The results indicate that full-time elementary schools have positive and long-lasting effects on students’ performance, increasing high-stakes high school admission test scores by 4.8 percent of a standard deviation. The effects are larger for females than for males. The difference in the effects between males and females of 2.1 percent of a standard deviation represents 16% of the gender gap in the high school admission exam. Moreover, full-time schooling decreases the probability of delays in schooling completion.

An application of Vietnamese handwriting text recognition for information extraction from high school admission form

This paper presents an effective Vietnamese handwritten text recognition model by applying an improved convolutional recurrent neural networks (CRNNs) model to high school enrollment forms in Tay Ninh province, Vietnam. First, the proposed model extracts data areas containing text characters from forms. Then, we connect text boxes on the same row and divide the fields that containing text into three specific regions. Finally, we detect areas containing text characters for handwritten text recognition. We use word error rate (WER) to evaluate the recognition process and obtain a result of 0.3602. This result is one of the best solutions to the Vietnamese handwritten text recognition problem.

Saved by the biodata: Meta-analytic relationships between biodata scores and student success

Biodata inventories are standardized questionnaires about a person's history (past behaviors and events in one's life). They are among the most predictive pre-employment assessment methods to hire job applicants, and their use extends beyond just in work settings. Biodata inventories have also been used for high stakes school admissions, and if strongly related to school success, may be useful measures to supplement other assessment methods within larger admissions programs. However, there are limits to knowledge regarding the criterion-related validity of biodata scores. This study examined the validity of biodata inventory scores in the prediction of school success according to two major moderators: scoring method (e.g., rational, or empirical) and construct domain. Isolating to studies that met strict requirements for inclusion, there were a total of 38 independent effects of the relationship between biodata scores and school success (grade point average or teaching ratings). Results showed that the relationship between biodata inventory scores and academic success was strong, with an average validity coefficient of 0.45 for academic achievement scales. Furthermore, validity varied as a function of scoring method. Empirical biodata scores correlated 0.50 with school success, whereas validity was .26 when rationally scored. These results make empirically scored biodata one of the most predictive admissions tools available, exceeding even the validity of grade point average and standardized test scores. Given these findings, biodata inventories should be more frequently considered for use as supplementary additions to existing admissions procedures, though as we discuss, there may be challenges to implementation in applicant settings.

A Study on the Differences in Perceptions between High School Teachers and Admissions Officers on the Direction of Reform of the College Admission System Following the Introduction of the High School Credit System

본 연구는 2025년 전면 도입을 앞두고 있는 고교학점제와 관련하여 대입제도를 어떠한 방향으로 개편해야 하는지를 모색하기 위하여 고등학교 교사와 대학의 입학사정관을 대상으로 향후 대입제도 개편 방향에 대해 어떠한 인식을 가지고 있는지 살펴보았다. 주요 조사 분야는 1) 고교학점제에 부합하는 대입전형, 2) 고교-대학 연계의 대입제도 개선 방향, 3) 대학 자율성과 책무성 강화 방향, 4) 정부의 제도 개입 방향으로 나누어 설문하였다. 대입제도의 주요 이해관계자인 교사와 입학사정관의 인식과 태도의 공통점과 차이점을 살펴봄으로써, 향후 대입정책의 개편에 대한 시사점을 얻고자 하였다. 연구결과, 고등학교 교사와 대학 입학사정관들은 공통적으로 학생부 종합전형을 고교 학점제에 가장 부합하는 전형이라고 인식하고 있었으며, 대체로 고등학교-대학이 서로 연계되는 방향으로 대입제도가 개편되어야 한다고 생각하고 있었다. 또한 대학은 지원자의 능력 중심으로 선발하되, 공정성과 책무성을 담보해야 하며, 정부는 입시부담을 완화하는 방향으로 대입정책을 설계되어야 한다고 보았다. 그러나 개별 사안에 따라 교사와 입학사정관이 인식을 달리하는 지점도 있었으며, 소재지역과 학교 규모에 따른 차이도 발견되었다. 교사와 입학사정관의 인식에서의 공통점과 차이점을 토대로 향후 대입제도 개편에 대한 정책적 시사점을 제안하였다.This study examines the commonalities and differences in perceptions and attitudes between high school teachers and college admissions officers about how the college admissions system should be changed in relation to the high school credit system. The main survey areas were 1) which college admissions type is in line with the high school credit system, 2) how to link high school and college systems, 3) how to strengthen university autonomy and accountability, and 4) how government should involve in a systematic change. By examining the positions of the major stakeholders, we seek implications for the design of college entrance policies. We found that high school teachers and university admissions officers commonly support 1) the comprehensive student record screening, 2) connecting high school and college, 3) universities selecting applicants based on their academic ability as well as fairness, and 4) easing the burden of admission requirements. However, they also had different opinions depending on their location and school size. Based on these commonalities and differences, policy implications for college admission system reform were proposed.

Open Admission’s Grade-Entry Requirements and Academic Performance in Junior High School: An Analysis

Private high-school admission procedures frequently involve testing prospective students to determine their eligibility for enrollment, but this changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Numerous schools were adversely affected by the situation. To survive the economic crisis and declining enrollment among schools, many private schools altered their admissions policies. Even admission test providers have switched to online testing with increased prices of two to three times. The introduction of open admission did away with the requirement for an entrance exam but required applicants to submit their grades from the previous two academic years, which served as a benchmark for their potential academic performance in the school. The researcher used this chance to conduct a descriptive-correlational study to determine whether the grade-entry requirements can accurately predict the learners' academic performance. The general averages of the respondents for the previous two academic years were correlated with their general averages for the current academic year, which served as a quantitative representation of their academic performance at the school where they were admitted. The learners' grade-entry requirements revealed a statistically significant relationship between those averages and their academic performance in the school. Furthermore, the school of origin and initial admission status, whether qualified or waitlisted, were also correlated with their general averages, and it was found that only the latter has a statistically significant relationship with academic performance. The researcher suggested that grade-entry requirements could already be used as a reliable indicator of the prospective academic performance of admission applicants, even without an admission test.

Admission Criteria as Predictors of Licensure Performances among Graduates of a State University in the Philippine Cordillera Administrative Region

Proficiency in licensure examinations has emerged as a foundation of pride for graduates and an attraction for potential students to higher education institutions (HEIs). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to uncover the admission criteria that confidently predicted the licensure performance of graduates of a state institution in the Philippine Cordillera Administrative Region. This study used correlation research and 654 randomly selected graduates of Ifugao State University (IFSU) who took and eventually passed their licensure tests. The records of the university registrar and the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC) were the primary sources of data. To comply with research ethics and standards, written permission from university officials was obtained. The mean, standard deviation, and frequency were used to describe the descriptive variables. Multiple regression analysis was utilized to identify the significant set of predictors of license performance per licensure examination. A stepwise procedure was used to select the best model. The study concludes that the performance of graduates in the fields of agriculture, criminology, and teacher education in their respective licensure examinations can best be predicted by their high school grade point average and admission test scores, whereas the performance of graduates in the field of forestry in their licensing exam is best explained by their performance in their secondary education curriculum.
 
 Received: 25 August 2022 / Accepted: 20 October 2022 / Published: 5 November 2022

Investigation of the 2019-2021 National Evaluation exam: A case study of high school admissions in Bucharest

Abstract With knowledge being at the center of societal development, global policy forums, such as OECD, promote policies to improve national education systems. According to the most recent PISA evaluation, 40% of Romanian 15-year students are considered functionally illiterate. The Romanian education system’s mission to catch up with international standards was challenged by the policy shocks following the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In an attempt to adapt to the new situation, the Minister of Education implemented a substantial reduction of the curricula covered by the National Evaluation exam held in 2020. In 2021, the exam was restructured so to resemble the PISA tests. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how these changes have impacted the Romanian upper education system. We used the 2019-2021 high school admission data published by the Ministry of Education. Our results indicate apparent progress of high school efficacy due to the inflationary grade effects. We provided an alternative metric based not on grades but high school candidates’ rank. The classification of high schools based on this instrument is revealed as more robust. Most high schools in Bucharest run in the lowest performance category with the upper education system relying on a few top-performing high schools. For administrators and policymakers, this type of instrument is crucial for a proper evaluation of educational institution efficacy and authentic progress. This type of evaluation is the first action in the process to meet OECD requirements to close the gap between the lowest and highest education institutions in the EECA region.

Tranziția inechitabilă către sistemul liceal. Studiu de caz: admiterea la liceu în București, România

The main objective of this article is to analyze the interaction between the principle of proximity in the enrollment process to primary school and the high school admission mechanism from an educational equity perspective. Specifically, I conduct a case study in which I analyze how the type of school graduated by a student in Bucharest influences the type of high school at which she will be admitted, given the present system of allocation. As such, I am interested in identifying the extent to which the school where the student is enrolled (when parents, theoretically cannot choose, as it is dependent on the street where they reside) can represent an explanatory factor for the probability to be admitted at a particular high school (a stage when parents and students can manifest their preferences for a school/specialization).

Data Mining Implementation with Algorithm C4.5 for Predicting Graduation Rate College Student

Academic evaluation and graduation of students are critical components of an academic information system's (AIS) effectiveness since they allow for the measurement of student learning progress. Additionally, the assessment stating whether the student passed or failed would benefit both the student and teacher by acting as a reference point for future performance suggestions and evaluations. Using Decision Tree C4.5, a comprehensive analysis of the student academic evaluation approach was conducted. Age, gender, public or private high school status, high school department, organization activity, age at high school admission, progress GPA (pGPA), and total GPA (tGPA) were all documented and evaluated from semester 1–4 utilizing three times the graduation criterion periods. The article's scope is confined to undergraduate programs. An accuracy algorithm (AC) with a performance accuracy of 79.60 percent, a true positive rate (TP) of 77.70 percent, and 91 percent quality training data achieved the highest performance accuracy value.

Ortaokul Öğretmenlerinin Görüşlerine Göre Ortaöğretim Merkezi Sınavı (LGS)’nin Üstünlükleri ve Sınırlıkları

The purpose of this research is to present the advantages and limitations of the Secondary Education Center Exam (SECE) conducted in 2017-2018 academic year in the opinions of middle school teachers. The study group of the research was consisted of 47 middle school teachers those who entered lessons the 8th grades as of the data collection period in Mamak district. As research method, semi-structured interview model, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. As the data collection tool, structured interview form is applied. The data obtained from the interviews have been analyzed using the method of descriptive analysis. The findings obtained in the research are given below: 1- According to middle school teachers, the advantage of secondary education center exam as regards previous high school admission exams is high distinctiveness and limitation of SECE requires high-level skills. 2- The distinctiveness of successful/unsuccessful students of SECE is high when it comes to yes/no questions. However, it is not qualified to discern from students who is solving problems fast/practical and high level skilled. 3- In SECE, difficulty of skill-based questions is coherent with learning outcomes in secondary education curriculum. Nevertheless, they are not coherent with assessment of high-level behaviors, extent, content intelligibility and schoolbooks. 4- In SECE, assessment of basic skills stated and aimed to improve in secondary education curriculum is adequate. However, the aims in curriculum are not adequate to question high-level skills. 5- According to middle school teachers, student achievement was affected by the students mostly register the closest school to their home and there is no obligation to have an exam.

Factors associated with mental health depending on the type of stress related to admission among correspondence course high school students in Japan

Objective This study aimed to determine the factors associated with mental health based on the type of stress related to high school admissions for correspondence courses.Methods The targeted participants were 3,888 students belonging to 11 campuses of a high school providing correspondence courses. During the homeroom, the teachers in charge distributed and collected questionnaires directly. The questionnaire was designed to collect data concerning demographic characteristics, stresses, mental health, and life skills. Concerning stress, the questions inquired about stress before admission and after admission. Further, they asked about stress related to entry regarding the study, friendship, relationship with teachers, club activities, school events, home environment, health, and work. Kessler 6 was used as an index of mental health.Results Questionnaires were returned by 2,424 students (response rate of 62.3%). Regarding the change in stress before and after admission, students showed decreases in anxiety after admission in other areas, excluding work. Because of the k-means clustering analysis, based on the scores of the eight areas of stress related to admission, six groups were extracted. Factors related to mental health were extracted from each group. Health stress was strongly associated with the K6 score in all groups. For the study stress group, friendship stress group, family environment, and health stress group, stress related to admission were associated with the K6 score. Furthermore, for the complex school-related stress group, friendship and family environment stress were associated with the K6 score. In the high-stress group, the K6 score was significantly associated with study stress. As for life skills, stress management and decision-making skills were associated with higher mental health.Conclusions These findings indicate that it is important to understand students' needs and support them in coping with stress and improving their life skills according to their stress type. Support should be developed for high school students enrolled in correspondence courses.

School Choice in Guangzhou: Why High-Scoring Students Are Protected?

Each year, millions of middle school graduates in China take a standardized test and compete for high school positions. Unlike other cities, Guangzhou still uses the immediate acceptance mechanism but implements a policy that students in the high-scoring group receive their allocations before those in the low-scoring group. In this paper, we study a class of the Guangzhou mechanisms, including the immediate acceptance (IA) and the serial dictatorship (SD) mechanism. We show that, if a collection of groups is refined by splitting its groups into a larger number of smaller subgroups, then the Guangzhou mechanism will perform more stably and less manipulable than before. This result provides a tool for policy makers to improve the allocation outcome of the IA mechanism under homogeneous priorities and justifies the use of a high-scoring student protection policy in Guangzhou’s high school admission.

Explaining monotonic ranking functions

Ranking functions are commonly used to assist in decision-making in a wide variety of applications. As the general public realizes the significant societal impacts of the widespread use of algorithms in decision-making, there has been a push towards explainability and transparency in decision processes and results, as well as demands to justify the fairness of the processes. In this paper, we focus on providing metrics towards explainability and transparency of ranking functions, with a focus towards making the ranking process understandable, a priori , so that decision-makers can make informed choices when designing their ranking selection process. We propose transparent participation metrics to clarify the ranking process, by assessing the contribution of each parameter used in the ranking function in the creation of the final ranked outcome, using information about the ranking functions themselves, as well as observations of the underlying distributions of the parameter values involved in the ranking. To evaluate the outcome of the ranking process, we propose diversity and disparity metrics to measure how similar the selected objects are to each other, and to the underlying data distribution. We evaluate the behavior of our metrics on synthetic data, as well as on data and ranking functions on two real-world scenarios: high school admissions and decathlon scoring.

Predictors of Pharmacy Student Performance on Written and Clinical Examinations in a Flipped Classroom Curriculum

Objective. To examine the effects of student demographics, prior academic performance, course engagement, and time management on pharmacy students' performance on course examinations and objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs).Methods. Study participants were one cohort of pharmacy students enrolled in a five-year combined Bachelor and Master of Pharmacy degree program at one institution. Variables included student demographics, baseline factors (language assessment and situational judgement test scores), prior academic performance (high school admission rank), course engagement, and student time management of pre-class online activities. Data were collected from course, learning management system, and institutional databases. Data were analyzed for univariate, bivariate, and multivariate associations (four linear regression models) between explanatory factors and outcome variables.Results. Three years of data on 159 pharmacy students were obtained and entered in the dataset. Significant positive predictors of OSCE communication performance included domestic (ie, Australian) student designation, higher baseline written English proficiency, and pre-class online activity completion. Positive predictors of OSCE problem-solving included workshop attendance and low empathy as measured by a baseline situational judgment test (SJT). Positive predictors of performance on year 2 end-of-course examinations included the Australian Tertiary Academic Rank, completing pre-class online activities prior to lectures, and high integrity as measured by an SJT.Conclusion. Several explanatory factors predicted pharmacy students' examination and OSCE performance in the regression models. Future research should continue to study additional contexts, explanatory factors, and outcome variables.