Predictors of Academic Success in an Early College Entrance Program

This exploratory study investigated commonly relied-upon admissions data points to see if factors, such as graduation and early college entrance program GPA, predicted academic success. Data from nearly 800 students admitted over 11 years to a state-supported residential early college entrance program located at a large Southern university in the United States were utilized for this study. Logistic regression failed to yield a model that could accurately predict whether a student would graduate from the program. Multiple regression models showed that high school GPA and ACT scores were predictive of performance and that factors like locality and ethnicity can have predictive power as well. However, the low variance in performance explained by the variables included in this study demonstrates that commonly relied-upon admissions data only provide limited information about a student’s likelihood of success in an early college entrance program.