Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP6237
Authors: Juan José Dolado; Eduardo Morales
Abstract: This paper analyses the determinants of academic performance of first-year undergraduate students in Economics at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, over the period 2001-2005. We focus on a few core subjects which differ in their degree of mathematical complexity. Type of school, specialization track at high school, and the grades obtained at the university entry-exam are among the key factors we examine. Our main finding is that those students who completed a technical track at high school tend to do much better in subjects involving mathematics than those who followed a social sciences track (tailor-made for future economics students) and that the latter do not perform significantly better than the former in subjects with less degree of formalism. Moreover, students from public schools are predominant in the lower and upper parts of the grade distribution while females tend to perform better than males.
Keywords: academic performance; multinomial logit; pre-university determinants; quantile regressions
JEL Codes: I21; I29
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| prior qualifications (C52) | academic performance (D29) |
| entry exam grade (A21) | academic performance (D29) |
| type of high school attended (I23) | academic performance (D29) |
| high school specialization (I23) | performance in mathematics (C12) |
| technical track (Y80) | performance in mathematics (C12) |
| social sciences track (A12) | performance in mathematics (C12) |
| public school with technical background (I23) | academic performance (D29) |
| female students (I24) | performance in mathematics (C12) |