Título en español.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to determine the capability to predict academic achievement of the present admission policy established in 1995-96, at University of Puerto Rico, Bayamón, and its posibl relationship with the "grades inflation" phenomenon. Performing a longitudinal tracking of the 13,202 students admitted to the 11 incoming classes during the period from 1995-96 to 2005-2006 yields a sample of more than 70,500 observations. The change in admission policy eliminated the advantage students from private schools had over those from public schools and reduced to a minimum the gap between genders. Moreover, the results show that by assigning a greater weight to high school GPA in the General Application Index (GAI) formula and therefore reducing the weight of the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) scores, "student quality" was reduced. Nonetheless, the evidence shows that the best predictor of academic success is the previous GAI formula, while the present formula is the worst predictor. Another result is that, independently of the time reference used, the occurrence of "grade inflation" is inversely related to "student quality."