The Process To Select Students To Directly Enter

Universities

This is a common situation that you have to face. Every year, you
have to select from a large group of 16-year olds, a few who
automatically qualify to join institutions of higher education even
before the final examinations.

This poses a big dilemma when these students have almost identical
academic results and extra-curricular activities.

Are there other ways of trying to separate these teenage students and
choose the most suitable to enter into the respective educational
faculties?

Here are some tips that you should seriously consider.

Philosophical Questions

Firstly, you can create some philosophical or ethical questions to

slowly see their own personal stand and bias. The coming new
workplace will have a big portion of robotics and automation. Thus it is
crucial to see if your candidates are not merely book-smart but am
also ready to face the new realities of life.

Video Resume

You can instruct them to make a minute presentation describing their

strengths and why they fit a particular faculty. This one-minute
presentation can follow the style of a video resume and should have
clear dialogue and accurate subtitles to allow the assessor to get a
first impression.

Referees

You can also contact the referees of these candidates and find out
why they want to recommend these students to direct-entry into
higher education. It is up to your own experience to discover if these
referees merely associate themselves with these candidates just to
give blind support but may not know have enough reasons for their
support
Extra-curricular Activities

You may have to create an internal system of grading your potential

candidates in terms of the results of their chosen extra-curricular
activities. For example, a higher grading can be assigned if the
candidates have proven leadership responsibilities.

Open-ended Questions

You can give all final-round candidates some open-ended questions

and ask them to provide their best replies and analysis to the given
case studies. Do ensure that you allocate sufficient time for these
activities.

Future Thoughts

Pose a question about where their chosen industries will be headed to

in the next few years. This is crucial because you do not want a
chosen candidate to switch faculties on a whim. Normally, a good
candidate will make an effort to read more about the new chosen
path.

Lego

The truth of the matter is this. Lego blocks are very good for any
candidate to highlight what is in his mind. The Lego pieces are of
different colours and sizes and are only constrained by the deep
recesses of the candidate's imagination.

Team building exercise and observation

You can also follow-up by allowing each final candidate to join a team
of senior students who are already in the higher educational
institutions. Break them into different groups and give them group
projects to do. Remember to delegate the group presentation to be
done by each candidate and then allow the other group members to
evaluate them. This is very crucial because their peers are very good
judges of competency and maturity.

Best of luck for your search.