The Impact of intake quality in student performance in science undergraduate program

Abstract

The quality of intake in terms of Z score to a particular course to different universities differs vastly in Sri Lanka. The students who get higher Z scores go to established universities mostly under merit category and the students from educationally disadvantaged districts with less Z score enter to the newly established universities. The variation in quality of intake in these newly established universities is greater and there is a concept that students' performance in the undergraduate programme is associated with the quality of intake. In this study the relationship between Z score and the student performance in two study programmes was analyzed for 174 students studying at the Faculty of Applied Sciences, South Eastern University of Sri Lanka. This study revealed that the quality of intake has some influence on the performance of the students at the beginning of the study programmes and it is lost gradually. The final performance of the students was not related to the intake quality of the students and this emphasizes that the current partial quota system of allocation should exist.