To Graduate from USAFA: Identifying Which Admissions Criteria Make the Best Predictors of Cadet Success

摘要

The purpose of this study is to identify which admissions criteria make the best predictors of cadet success at the United States Air Force Academy. Using graduation as the measure of cadet success, the study's findings and resulting recommendations seek to increase the efficiency of selection decisions and hence the graduation rate. The study's methodology uses 10 years of existing cadet data to quantify, rank, and interpret the admissions criteria's relationships to graduation. The Research and Assessment Division of the Academy's Plans and Programs Directorate supplied the data from its databases while withholding any information that could lead to personal identification. The results of this study yield three types of information: (1) they identify which admissions criteria have significant relationships with graduation and which do not; (2) they lead to an ordinal ranking of admissions criteria in Table 3 based on the strength of their relationship to graduation; and (3) they provide a formula, shown in Figure 3, for determining an individual's probability of graduating from the Academy when given entries for each of the admissions criteria. In addition to comparing individual admissions criteria, the study compares admissions composites currently used in the selection process. After finding the composites to be excellent predictors of graduation for the most part, the study looks for ways to improve the composites. It begins by comparing the strength of the academic and extracurricular composites' relationships to graduation and their current weights in the weighted composite. The study then evaluates how well the selection composite takes into account the relationships between individual admissions criteria and graduation. As a result, the study is able to provide recommendations for changing the weights of existing admissions criteria in addition to recommending a probability model for use as a new admissions criterion.