Providing transparency and credibility: the selection of international students for Australian universities. An examination of the relationship between scores in the International Student Admissions Test (ISAT), final year academic programs and an Australian university’s foundation program

Abstract

Throughout 2003–04 five cohorts of students in their final year of school studies in various Malaysian colleges and a group of students completing an Australian university foundation year in Malaysia sat the International Student Admissions Test (ISAT). The ISAT is a multiple‐choice test of general academic abilities developed for students whose first language is not English. Both sets of scores were examined to investigate the relationship between skills measured by the academic programs and the generic reasoning skills measured by the ISAT. The data were examined by looking at correlations and patterns of the ISAT scores, and the total academic program scores and individual subject scores. As well, multiple regression was used to examine if the ISAT could act as a predictor for academic program scores. Although the ISAT and measures of achievement in the academic programs are two completely different instruments, the study showed that: (i) the scores were positively and significantly correlated; (ii) patterns of co‐variation of the ISAT and academic program scores demonstrate a positive relationship; and (iii) there is evidence that achieving a high score in the academic programs requires high reasoning skills, as measured by the ISAT. The findings of this study indicate that the ISAT is a useful predictor of student ability for use in the university selection process for international applicants.

Keywords:

• international students
• tests
• university admissions

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the helpful comments during the preparation of this manuscript by Kathleen Bagot and Juliette Mendelovits. We also extend our thanks to Mr Matias Francisco de Menezes (former Principal of Kolej Mara Banting), Zurina Mahmood (INTEC, UiTM) and Dr Katijah Khalid (Sunway College, Malaysia) for granting permission for the students in their programs to participate in the study, and for facilitating the administration of the ISAT.

Notes

1. Ethical approval for the project was obtained from the Monash University Standing Committee on Ethics in Research Involving Humans.

2. Data analysis was performed using Statistical Program for Social Sciences (SPSS) (Version 12). Throughout the analysis, P < 0.05 was adopted as the minimum criterion for statistical significance.

3. Multiple regression is the study of the relationship between a dependent variable and several independent variables.