Factors Affecting the Academic Performance and Graduation of University Students

This article investigated what factors affect studentʼs academic performance and successful graduation within 4 years at the faculty of economics of a medium-sized private university. Our faculty has been conducting a relatively large-scale questionnaire to freshmen students since 2012. Based on each studentʼs answers to the questionnaire combined with their official academic records, we made an analysis using random-forest regression/classification techniques. We have got the following propositions. 1. GPA in freshman year is affected by the academic ranking of the high school each student graduated from, GPA in their high school days, and whether their admission is based on recommendation or not. In addition, studentʼs degree of motivation, which can be drawn from their answers to the questionnaire, is also significant. However, these factors can explain at most only 30% of the variation in GPA in freshman year. 2. GPA in senior year deeply depends on GPA in freshman year. Both are in a strong positive correlation (ρ=0.8). In addition, GPA in studentʼs high school days still remains significant. These factors explain more than 60% of the variation in GPA in senior year. 3. Prediction about which students will drop out becomes possible at the end of the first semester in freshman year. Although the accuracy of our simple model is around 45%, we hope it can be improved by incorporating more explanatory variables into the model.departmental bulletin pape