High participation systems (HPS) of higher education (HE) are common throughout the world. The consequences of HE expansion has attracted enough academic attention; however, much less discussed is the impact of the HE expansion on retaking the college entrance examination. Drawing upon China's provincial panel data, a battery of econometric…

This paper aimed to investigate how the diversity of scientific methods is represented in practical items of college entrance examinations from three science subjects in China. The study was conducted based on the theoretical framework derived from Brandon's Matrix consisting of four types of scientific methods. National Papers for comprehensive…

Higher education institutions need to develop valid, fair, and objective selection methods. Current literature reporting the development and validation of new national large-scale selection tests is scarce. This two-phased study aimed to (1) develop and (2) evaluate the validity of the Finnish digital Universities of Applied Sciences Entrance…

Scientific methods have received widespread attention in recent years. Based on the analytical framework derived from Brandon's matrix consisting of four categories of scientific methods, this paper aims to conduct a content analysis to examine how the diversity of scientific methods is represented in college entrance chemistry examination papers…

This report is focused on the uptake of A level subjects in England in 2023. Uptake in an A level subject is defined as the number or percentage of students at the end of Key Stage 5 (who have entered for at least one AS or A level) taking the subject. This report was produced using publicly available data from the Department for Education's (DfE)…

Higher education is a powerful tool for migrant integration into destination countries. This paper presents an empirical comparison between native and migrant students in Chile, focusing on their trajectory through different transitions: high school graduation, performance on university entrance exams, and decision to enroll in technical or…

Reading comprehension constitutes an important part of the Chinese National Matriculation English Test (NMET) which influences English teaching practice greatly. Despite the focus of many studies on NMET reforms, content validity, and washback effects, there remains a notable gap in research regarding the genre of reading texts in NMET. Drawing on…

This study uses administrative student data from Chile to explore the transitions of urban and rural students to higher education. We find that urban students are more likely to register to take university entrance exams than rural students. Among those who do take the exams, urban students perform significantly better. Even though both groups of…

Those who compete in the Gaokao, China's College Entrance Exam, are often referred to as Gaokao zhanshi, or warriors. Based on long-term ethnographic research, this article examines how Gaokao warriors combine two types of agency that are conventionally considered contradictory: the docile cultivation of virtue and the struggle against social…

An essential task in higher education is to construct a fair admission procedure. A great deal of research has been conducted on a central aspect of admission: predictive validity. However, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that investigates how the predictive validity of a composite admission score could be improved without…

The paper argues that contemporary test validity theory places the consequences of testing on the lives of all college applicants at the back of the test validation argument. It introduces the notion of test efficacy as a process to gather evidence on claims on consequences of testing on all college applicants that can be traced back to validity.…

It is widely known that test anxiety (TA) is associated with a decrease in test scores. The objective of this study is to provide evidence of the existence of two paths through which TA affects test scores: an indirect path that is associated with the mediation of the updating efficiency and a direct path moderated by the putting into perspective…

This paper deals with the results of students during the preparing courses of mathematics for entrance exams at an university. These courses take place every year and since the Covid-19 period, they are not only face-to-face, but also online. The study involves students of secondary schools who apply to the university of economics. This report…

Today, numerous countries utilize unified methods and systematic standardized examinations such as national examinations as formal procedures to select qualified applicants for admission to higher education institutions since higher education is viewed as the major path and criterion to upward mobility. In Iran, the university entrance examination…

Utilizing the framework of the L2 motivational self-system as its theoretical foundation, this study focuses on a total of 52 students who discontinue their English learning within a senior high school in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. The primary objective of this study is to discern the underlying motivations prompting students to discontinue their…