Not everything is University Admission Test: ranking as a path to University Admission in Chile

Abstract

For years, the university admission system has been criticized for its strong link with social and cultural characteristics of the applicants, reproducing the segmentation that is evident in the school environment. To correct these biases, in 2013 the Grade Ranking was incorporated as a weighting factor, valuing components of school career and educational context. The objective of this article is to describe the impacts that the Grade Ranking has had on the 2018 admission process, in terms of equal opportunities and group inclusion. With a quantitative methodology, this article uses official databases to perform a statistical analysis of the 2018 admission results, constructing indexes and outlining trends. The results highlight the positive impact that the Ranking has had on weighted scores and selection rates, in addition to the compensation it makes to historically relegated groups by valuing the effort deployed in adverse contexts. The conclusions argue that, although the Ranking is an efficient mechanism to promote greater equity in university admission processes, it is not capable of reversing the inequality and structural segmentation of the Chilean educational system.