A Comparative study on the importance of non-academic factors for university admissions in the United States and Japan

• In Event: Poster session I
  In Poster Session: Poster session 1

Proposal

Introduction
　In Japan, the reforming the way to make admission decisions to university has been demanded by MEXT at present. For the purpose of making it clear what is the key issue for the reform, we have carried out the comparative study on the university admissions system among different countries, especially focusing on the non-academic factors. In this paper, we would like to report the summary of recent interviews at California, and give an insight to suggestions to the reform of admissions way in Japan.

Research Methods
　The interviewer sent research purpose in advance by e-mail and interviewed the university, high school that received consent for the research cooperation. Interviewees are admissions officers at San Francisco State University and California Berkeley and also counselors, principal at Corona Del Mar High School. Interview was held each universities and high school for 2hours from 14th to 19th May, 2018. Interview was conducted in a semi-structured interview which decide rough question items in advance and to ask further in detail according to the answer of respondents.
Interviewer asked university admissions officers “How to evaluate the high school record, especially non-academic ability at the university entrance examination in the United states” and “How much weight is occupied in the evaluation of the high school record in the university entrance examination as a whole”. And interviewer also asked high school counselors and principal “Is the non-academic ability to be trained in high school and university the same”. All interviews were recorded with the permission of the respondents and interviewer transcribed the tape after the interviews.

Results and Discussion
　From the common data set given by the universities in U.S, we can see the relationship between the weights of various factors for admissions decisions and the selectivity, retention rate, and other indicators of each university. The lower acceptance rates universities show, the more factors they tend to use. We have obtained the same tendency in our interviewing at universities and high schools of California and Hawaii. On the other hand, the opposite situations happen for Japanese universities. The highly ranked universities seem to tend to use only paper examination to measure mainly academic ability. Such a difference between the two countries might be generated due to the difference of the way to choose course selection for undergraduate. Students in U.S. can choose after entering university, but in Japan, mostly they have to do before entering university, that is, when they are the high school students.
　From the view point of the above-mentioned difference how to choose the major field at university, we think that we should discuss about the curriculum before/after entering university in addition when we consider the reform admissions system. In this study, we would like to point out what is the key point for reforming the way of admissions decisions, especially for Japanese universities.

Authors

• Noboru Miyoshi, Hiroshima University

• Junichi Nagata, Hiroshima University

• Toshihiko Sugihara, Hiroshima University