Admission Test as Predictor of Student Performance in Political Science and Psychology Students of Rizal Technological University

One gauge of a university’s performance lies in the students’ capacity to finish an academic program according to the prescribed time frame. This is one of the criteria for the Major Final Output (MFO) for the Performance Based Bonus (PBB) given to State, Universities and Colleges (SUCs). As such it is important to explore variables contributing to this major output. One factor lies in the selection process of a student entering in a university. Hence the focus of this study is in the predictive ability of the admission test scores with academic performance as measured by the first year general weighted average (GWA) among 195 Psychology students and 54 Political Science students of the Rizal Technological University-Pasig Campus. The causal-comparative method and correlational method were applied to get the differences between the scores of both courses and the relationship of the variables. The percentage of drop out and retention of students were also explored. The highest frequency of admission test scores for Psychology was 76% and 74% and 74% and 71% was the highest admission test scores for Political Science. The overall drop-out rate for Political Science is 58.2% and the retention rate is 41.8% whereas the drop-out rate for Psychology is 43.4% and the retention rate is 56.6%. Results showed that there is no significant differences between the admission test scores of the Political Science and Psychology students. No differences in their general weighted average were observed. Regression correlation was used to find the predictive value of the admission test scores and results revealed that the admission test score was significant in predicting the academic performance for both courses.

Keywords – academic performance, admission test prediction, college entrance examination, drop out and retention rate, entrance test