IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejeap/v22y2022i1p155-191n6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Admission Groups and Academic Performance: A Study of Marginal Entrants in the Selection to Higher Education

Author

Listed:
  • Karlsson Linn

    (Department of Economics, Umeå School of Business, Economics and Statistics, Umeå university, Samhällsvetarhuset, Bibliotekgränd 6, A24407, 901 87, Umeå, Sweden)

  • Wikström Magnus

    (Department of Economics, Umeå School of Business, Economics and Statistics, Umeå university, Samhällsvetarhuset, Bibliotekgränd 6, B20801, 901 87, Umeå, Sweden)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study whether Swedish admission policies 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 9024 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 we do not find any effect for highly competitive programmes.

Suggested Citation

  • Karlsson Linn & Wikström Magnus, 2022. "Admission Groups and Academic Performance: A Study of Marginal Entrants in the Selection to Higher Education," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 22(1), pages 155-191, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:22:y:2022:i:1:p:155-191:n:6
    DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2020-0434
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2020-0434
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/bejeap-2020-0434?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    higher education; selection; admission groups; marginal admit; achievement;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:22:y:2022:i:1:p:155-191:n:6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.