March 1, 2025

The NUS Open House, generally held every March, welcomes prospective students and provides answers to their questions about university life. This coincides with when students receive their GCE A-Level grades and begin to decide on whether to pursue a college education. This can be a stressful time due to the importance of this decision, with considerations like how it might affect their later outcomes in employment and further education. Students also have to navigate the challenging realm of college admissions, from writing applications to fulfilling the criteria imposed by the various universities.

In ‘Do college admissions criteria matter? Evidence from discretionary vs. grade-based admission policies’ (Economics of Education Review, 2023), Mr Rais Kamis (NUS ALSET), Professor Jessica Pan (NUS Economics), and Dr Kelvin Seah (NUS Economics) look into how college admissions criteria have affected students in the long-run, by studying the differences between two admission tracks – a regular track, that relies solely on academics, and a discretionary track, that considers non-academic qualities as well. The researchers find that the discretionary admission (DA) track tends to produce students with better academic performance, more holistic development, and notably higher earnings post-graduation, as compared to regular track students that were marginally admitted.

The study was conducted in NUS through analysing the data of students enrolled from 2009 to 2013. NUS is perceived as a highly selective and well-ranked university in Singapore. Since 2004, NUS begun admitting students on not only the regular track, but also through discretionary admissions, to adhere to the Ministry of Education’s guidelines to reduce emphasis on academic qualifications alone.

The researchers find that the students that enter via DA, although having slightly lower academic achievements than those marginally admitted on the regular track, do not fare any worse. In fact, a significant number of DA students outperform these marginally admitted students on a number of measures. These findings call into question the usefulness of typical college admissions based on academic qualifications and provide useful insights for education policymakers to reconsider the admissions process and pay more heed to DA options.

Read the article here.