The unified state exam results and academic performance of first-year students

the paper examines the possibility and feasibility of the use of the Unified State Exam (USE) results to identify the students who will be able to successfully continue their education at a university level. Petrozavodsk State University has the information system «Integrated Information-Analytical System of University Management (IIAS)» that allows the university to review students’ academic performance over time. The study is based on the statistical analysis of the data on the performance of first-year students at Petrozavodsk State University in comparison with the USE results from 2009 to 2013. The purpose of the research is to test the correlation between student grades and their USE results. The authors conclude that there is a positive dependence between student performance at school and their successes as university freshmen, which allows universities to take a more balanced view when ranking potential applicants by the examination results. The authors propose to monitor student performance regularly to improve the quality of education. In particular, they propose to identify first-year students that may potentially have low academic performance, to identify the possible improprieties in grading, as well as to identify the subjects for which there is a little grades differentiation during the exams. The data on student progress are considered over time to monitor the performance of student groups as well as individual students, adjusting their educational routes and providing both general and personalized approach. The conclusions obtained may reduce the amount of resources required to work with first-year students due to the proper targeting. The authors draw attention to the fact that although the university has a large amount of data related to the learning process, they are almost never used in a decision-making process. The proposed conclusions should be interesting to managers of higher education and researchers in the field of continuity of education.