Resumen de Impact of mathematics and physical science on the success of south african engineering technology students
B.J. van Wyk, Wah Hofman, I. Louw
The general conclusion arrived at in the literature is that the South African National Senior Certificate (NSC) is not areliable predictor of academic success at traditional universities. By sharing research undertaken at a South AfricanUniversity of Technology (UoT) on the impact of individual cognitive factors and NSC results on study success, this papershows that this conclusion is not necessarily true for South African UoT Engineering students. To assess this impact anddetermine the readiness of students for UoT Engineering curricula, the relationship between pre-university academicfactors and the success of engineering students was investigated. An ex post facto study was carried out on a sample of 416students drawn from first-time-entering National Diploma engineering student cohorts of 2009 and 2010 to determine apossible correlation between their NSC results, additional pre-admission test results and the number of subjects passedafter one year and four years of study, respectively. The findings indicated that NSC Mathematics and Physical Science arestatistically the most significant predictors of success in the first year. Despite the pre-admission tests used in this study notrevealing significantly more about a student’s potential than only the final NSC results, the conclusion reached by theresearchers was that such tests might be useful when student application data is unreliable, i.e. when students apply withGrade 11 or interim Grade 12 results.
