Which Factors Determine Academic Performance of Undergraduate Students in Economics? Some Spanish Evidence

Juan Dolado and Eduardo Morales

No 6237, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper analyses the determinants of academic performance of first-year undergraduate students in Economics at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, over the period 2001-2005. We focus on a few core subjects which differ in their degree of mathematical complexity. Type of school, specialization track at high school, and the grades obtained at the university entry-exam are among the key factors we examine. Our main finding is that those students who completed a technical track at high school tend to do much better in subjects involving mathematics than those who followed a social sciences track (tailor-made for future economics students) and that the latter do not perform significantly better than the former in subjects with less degree of formalism. Moreover, students from public schools are predominant in the lower and upper parts of the grade distribution while females tend to perform better than males.

Keywords: Academic performance; Multinomial logit; Pre-university determinants; Quantile regressions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I29 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-dcm, nep-edu, nep-ltv and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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