Case Study: The Unified State Exam and Other Admission Tests as a Predictor of Academic Performance at the IT University

摘要

Innopolis University is a newly established institution in the city of Innopolis, Russia. The city was established in 2013 as a special zone with relaxed taxation for IT companies to foster the industry's development.1 It was planned as a city with 100k+ population, which will be primarily represented by IT professionals. Innopolis University was established by major Russian IT companies to cover a shortage of IT engineers on the Russian market. The university adheres to the Bologna process with broad adoption of best practices from partner institutions (namely, Carnegie Mellon University). English is used as a primary teaching language. As of 2015, tuition for all students is covered by grants awarded by founder companies. This grant system implies a strict selection process, with only 2.5% of applicants being admitted. At present, there are around 350 students attending the university. The University offers programs in the fields of Software Engineering, Robotics, Big Data and Information Security. Among the offered programs, certain prerequisites are shared, e.g. basic programming, familiarity with databases and networks, etc. To provide students with these competencies, most programs share some subset of courses, which provided suitable conditions for conduction a formal analysis of student performance. On this basis, the ultimate goal is to further tailor the admissions process to the university's needs.