Predictive Ability of Advanced Secondary School Students ' Performance to First Year Undergraduate Students ' Performance: The Case of University of Dar es Salaam Business School Students

Abstract

There has been a complaint that a number of students admitted tovarious universities have been failing to complete their universitystudies, even though, they met the admission criterion. This study aimedat evaluating the predictive ability of advanced secondary schoolstudents ' performanceto their first year undergraduate performance.The good pass marks are the only selection criteria to join university.Data were collected form University of Dare es Salaam students ' academic record database for 928 students for 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 academic years. Data were analyzedthrough regression analysisto predict the university students ' performance based on their entryqualifications.Results indicated that there was a positive correlationbetween undergraduate performance (outcome variable) and theirentryqualification performance, whether analysis is done by sex or year ofexamination, subject combinations. In addition, it was found that onlya tenth of undergraduate student ' s performance was explained bytheir entry level performance. The study recommends establishing otherfactors that affect university students ' performance before selectingthem to join for university education.Key term: Predictive Ability, Student Performance