Admission groups and academic performance: A study of marginal entrants in the selection to higher education

Linn Karlsson () and Magnus Wikström ()
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Linn Karlsson: Department of Economics, Umeå University, Postal: Department of Economics, Umeå University, S 901 87 Umeå, Sweden, https://www.umu.se/handelshogskolan
Magnus Wikström: Department of Economics, Umeå University, Postal: Department of Economics, Umeå University, S 901 87 Umeå, Sweden, https://www.umu.se/handelshogskolan

No 1000, Umeå Economic Studies from Umeå University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to study whether Swedish admission policies are 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 9,024 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 increasing selection by grades in highly selective programmes would not increase achievement.

Keywords: Higher education; selection; admission groups; marginal admit; achievement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I23 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2021-09-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur and nep-ure
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