Return to search

The Impact of Changing TOEFL Cut-Scores on University Admissions

As the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is often used as a determiner for university admissions, this study observes the effect on the international student population at a large private university through the examination of the international student admissions data including TOEFL and first-year GPA from 2005-2015. With the anonymous data of 9,837 students, researchers analyzed the result of a cut-score change at the university. Results indicated that the number of international students decreased at the university. As expected, the TOEFL data revealed a normal distribution for the overall (combined) score and subsection scores, while the GPA data did not. The ANOVA for the TOEFL revealed that the change in cut-scores was not completely implemented in 2010. The GPA results from the ANOVA did not appear to be increasing. Correlation analysis reflected a decrease in the correlation coefficient when comparing results from before and after the cut-score change. Correlations of the subsection TOEFL score presented interesting findings. Multiple regression analysis indicated similar conclusions.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BGMYU2/oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-7898
Date01 July 2017
CreatorsDecker, Laura Michelle
PublisherBYU ScholarsArchive
Source SetsBrigham Young University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceAll Theses and Dissertations
Rightshttp://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Page generated in 0.0023 seconds