Utilization of Standardized College Entrance Metrics to Predict Undergraduate Student Success in Chemistry

Abstract

Quantitative metrics are widely employed to determine the probability of an applicant succeeding in a specific program of interest, ranging from undergraduate or graduate admissions to fellowships. The admissions office at the United States Military Academy at West Point uses an internal college entrance examination rank (CEER) assessment algorithm of high school students, based on ACT and SAT scores in addition to consideration of high school performance, to assess student academic abilities and their probability of surpassing graduation requirements. To develop a tool for predicting student performance in first-semester general chemistry, we utilized CEER scores to predict student success on the national exam produced by the American Chemical Society (ACS) for general chemistry. Our results show that CEER is a strong predictor of student outcomes and a better predictor when compared to SAT Math, ACT Science, or ACT Math in isolation. Further stratification of the CEER distribution into four categories, ranging from at-risk to high achiever, identified a gradient by which students are likely to exceed the national average on the ACS exam. To further assess this prediction, we then demonstrated that the CEER brackets correlated closely to student grades in the course, therein illustrating its utility in predicting categories of students who are likely to fail, underperform, or excel. We anticipate that these tools are broadly generalizable to undergraduate admissions decisions, can assist in the placement process for students in general or advanced sections of chemistry, could yield insight when making scholarship or fellowship decisions, and more broadly can facilitate the design of group learning dynamics aimed at enhancing student outcomes.

Predictions of success in organic chemistry based on a mathematics skills test and academic achievement

“…As such, chemistry education research has extensively reported on the use of mathematics assessments to predict success in general chemistry courses. Many of these include the mathematics portion of the SAT or ACT (Craney and Armstrong, 1985;Rixse and Pickering, 1985;Spencer, 1996;Lewis and Lewis, 2007;Ralph and Lewis, 2018;Kreiser et al, 2022), while others are more institution-based and cover common topics. Logarithms, scientific notation, graphs, algebra, and arithmetic without the use of a calculator frequently appear on these assessments of quantitative literacy and quantitative reasoning (Bohning, 1982;Leopold and Edgar, 2008;Kennepohl et al, 2010;Shelton et al, 2021).…”