Admissions of International Graduate Students: Art or Science? A Business School Experience

Samantha Heslop (s.heslop@icmacentre.rdg.ac.uk) and Simone Varotto (s.varotto@icmacentre.ac.uk)
Additional contact information
Samantha Heslop: ICMA Centre, University of Reading

ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance from Henley Business School, University of Reading

Abstract: International students are often well represented in graduate programmes in North America and Europe. Information on foreign countries' education systems and grading schemes is available but cross-country comparisons are often challenging and highly subjective. Therefore, universities have a clear need for calibrating admissions of international students to ensure a fair and cost effective selection process. By comparing the performance of international students in their host institution with their entry qualifications we devise a simple approach to detecting systematic biases in the perceived quality of the applicants and propose corrective actions. We find that by using public information on cross-country comparisons of academic qualifications, country selection biases can occur and produce a substantial impact on international students' performance and failure rates. Our model is based on admission data that are routinely collected by universities which should ensure its broad applicability.

Keywords: admissions; country bias; entry qualifications; failure probability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2007-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/files/pdf/dps/dp2007_08.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/files/pdf/dps/dp2007_08.pdf [302 Found]--> https://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/files/pdf/dps/dp2007_08.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rdg:icmadp:icma-dp2007-08

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance from Henley Business School, University of Reading Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marie Pearson (marie.pearson@henley.ac.uk).