Assessing Academic Performance for Economics Majors through Exam- and Application-based Entrance Channels in Taiwan
Advances in Pacific Basin Business, Economics and Finance
ISBN: 978-1-80043-871-2, eISBN: 978-1-80043-870-5
Publication date: 22 July 2021
Abstract
This study takes advantage of abundant data from the Economics Department at National Tsing Hua University to empirically evaluate whether there exist academic performance differentials between undergraduate students from two entrance channels (exam-based and application-based methods) across courses and grades. We first evaluate the academic performance between the students based on two entrance channels, and then incorporate the General Scholastic Ability Test (GSAT) score (including five subjects of Chinese Literature, Mathematics, English, Science, and Society) into the independent variables to control for the students' ability. Our empirical results exhibit the students recruited through the application-based method outperform those admitted from the exam-based method in required courses after controlling for the students' individual characteristics. Nevertheless, we found that the advantage disappears for the elective courses. Furthermore, the academic gaps between the two groups of students tend to decline or disappear when students are seniors. The findings indicate that entrance exam scores (e.g., the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores in the United States) are good indicators for predict college academic performance, making the potential function of entrance exam in Taiwan relatively comparable to that in the United States. The findings also detail that individual GSAT scores on English, Math, and Society are positively and significantly associated with his/her performance on the core courses in Economics, supporting a significant learning progression from the curricula of senior high school to the undergraduate college education.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgment
We would like to thank Hwei-Lin Chuang, Roger P.C. Cheng, and Stephen Jui-Hsien Chou for many useful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter. Financial support from the National Science Council in the form of grant NSC 102-2410-H-007-011-MY2 is gratefully acknowledged. The responsibility for errors in fact or judgment is ours.
Citation
Lin, E.S., Lu, Y.-L., Lin, M.-C. and Wang, H.-C. (2021), "Assessing Academic Performance for Economics Majors through Exam- and Application-based Entrance Channels in Taiwan", Lee, C.-F. and Yu, M.-T. (Ed.) Advances in Pacific Basin Business, Economics and Finance (Advances in Pacific Basin Business, Economics and Finance, Vol. 9), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 253-273. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2514-465020210000009014
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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