Introducing: A New Tool for Admissions Officers
A Personality Survey that Predicts Academic Performance
The admissions process at most universities is complex for the student and difficult for the admissions officers. A typical university can have 10,000+ applicants for their Freshman class and accept only 2,500 or so. Failure of an accepted applicant to do well, hurts that student and means that a potentially successful applicant may have been rejected. The critical question asked about each applicant is simply stated:
How likely is this person to be an academic high-performer
in our University?
What Factors Predict Freshman Grades?
The most consistently used “measure” of the success of a university’s admission effort is the end-of-year grade-point-average (GPA) of the freshman class.
About 63% of the variance is attributed to personality factors (e.g.- perseverance, motivation, energy, attitude, dedication, etc.). These factors have been typically assessed subjectively, using interviews, writing samples, references, etc..
Until now, there has been no way to objectively assess the personality component in the admissions procedure.
Of course, personality tests were available during the last 60 years, but they all required the development of a profile or “picture of the ideal student”. Not only were people hesitant to think about one, all-inclusive profile of an ideal student, considerable error is introduced by profiling.
The Rosner-Edwards Protocol (Patent Pending):
Direct Prediction of Academic Performance
Although it seemed logical to decrease error by removing the intermediate step of profiling, it required a technically sophisticated, and innovative use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make it possible. The REP makes a direct connection between the personality test questions and the academic performance being predicted.
No profile is generated.
1. No profile --- no profiling error.
The REP uses the grades of the University’s best and worst performers from the previous freshman class to generate a Unique Selection Survey (USS) designed to do one thing: differentiate the academic high-performers from the low-performers in terms of their personality. An Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine does the mathematical task of selecting those questions (and answers) that best differentiate those performers. Pre-AI statistical procedures could not do the job with a suitable degree of accuracy.
2. Your students are the normative group, therefore - that error is eliminated.
The result of the REP Unique Selection Surveyis a prediction of performance, not a profile. You receive an instantaneous report of the applicant’s likelihood of being an academic high-performer at your University.
3. At last, a personality tool that is predictive rather than descriptive!
The report is presented in numeric form – easy to understand and clear. In that way, it is similar to the numeric form of the SAT and the ACT results. The big difference is that the score directly relates to your university.
4. The survey is dynamic not static. The USS “gets smarter” at predicting which applicants are likely to be high academic performers, thereby removing another limitation of personality profiling.
Periodically, the subsequent academic performance of all of the people who have taken the University’s Unique Selection Survey is entered into that database and a second AI engine re-evaluates all questions and answers and updates the ability of that survey to predict academic performance. This is not a re-calculation of the numbers in a profile based on averages due to a retest of your top performers. This is an on-going, re-adjustment based on additional academic performance data from everyone who has taken the instrument.
5. Your University’s Unique Selection Survey isn’t a general test used by multiple schools – it is only usable at your University.
The survey we develop for you is not a general personality profile, that is similar to what you need for your school. It is designed to differentiate the potential high-academic performers using academic performance at your University. It becomes part of the selection process along with the other data collected, such as academic skills, intelligence and High School GPA.. Additionally, other benefits to the organization are:
- Cost of survey development is greatly reduced.
- The surveys are administered on-line, 24 hours per day/7 days per week – no scheduled test dates – no schedule conflicts.
- The applicants do not have to travel to a proctored test site.
- No university personnel are required to proctor the survey or to score it.
- No university data storage is required, now or ever.
- Results are instantaneously reported.
- Cost per administration is typically less than non-dynamic tests and (similar to the ACT and SAT) paid for by the applicant.