Traditional and personal admissions criteria: Predicting candidate performance in US educational leadership programmes

Abstract

This paper examines the predictive validity of traditional academic and personal screening criteria used for admitting students into a Statewide Cooperative Doctoral Programme in Educational Leadership on student performance in the programme. This research examined the relationships among traditional admission criteria which included GRE scores (verbal, analytic, and quantitative), undergraduate and graduate GPA, and personal admissions criteria including an on‐site problem‐solving writing activity, a writing sample, and an interview. These measures were compared to student performance on selected programme measures that included comprehensive exam scores, time to degree completion, and an online writing score for a large group of students in a cohort‐based doctorate of education programme (N > 300). Findings from the study suggest that personal screening measures such as interviews, on‐site and real‐time problem solving activities, and on‐site and timed writing activities are more accurate predictors of student performance in an Ed.D. leadership programme than are traditional screening measures such as GRE scores, undergraduate GPAs, and graduate GPAs.

Notes

1. Interviews also generated a scholarship potential score. The scholarship potential score was excluded from the regression analyses because it was strongly correlated to professional potential scores and caused problems of multicollinearity in the regression results (Kerlinger and Pedhauzer 1973).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Meredith Mountford

Meredith Mountford is an Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Educational Leaders at Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA. Email: [email protected].

Mark Ehlert

Mark Ehlert is a Research Analyst in the Economics Department at the University of Missouri – Columbia.

Jim Machell

James Machell serves as dean of the College of Education and Professional Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Dan Cockrell

Dan Cockrell, Ed.D., is a Professor Emeritus faculty member in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (ELPA) at the University of Missouri‐Columbia.