The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

THE University of The Bahamas is set to review its admissions policy to reduce dependence on the country's tardy national examination results.

UB President Dr Rodney Smith said the timeline for those results often put high school graduates "down to the wire", and he believes the institution loses out on prospective students.

Provost Dr Linda Davis said the university will use data gathered from its summer bridge programme.

"We are looking at other markers, other measures for success," Dr Davis said.

Dr Smith said: "One of the problems we've been having for many, many years ties to the BGCSE for our admissions criteria, the BGCSE results don't come out until the first or second week of August at the latest. Here's the problem, students going off to college or who are interested in going to college, and graduates of high schools in The Bahamas are also applying to colleges and universities abroad.

"The drop dead date to indicate that you are going to accept a seat or not is May 1 so we know for a fact there are many Bahamian students who would choose UB as their first choice, but if we put it down to the wire like this and they won't find out until August and they are going to end up missing an opportunity if they don't respond by May 1.

"We believe that we lost a lot of students that way."

UB began a partnership with Bahamas Baptist Community College and found a group of students who lie on the cusp of eligibility, Dr Davis said. The Academic Enhancement Programme, modeled after the summer institute, was introduced this fall with around 60 students.

Dr Davis said: "Students who have just fallen short, who are on the cusp and just need maybe a seven-week period accelerated to bring themselves up. The academic enhancement programme built after the summer institute introduced two years ago allows students access to the university system at various points in the year.

"As we track those students, what is their success rate, how are they performing, are the indicators that we are using for access those programmes as accurate as BGSCE, if so what does our admission policy need to look like? We have flexibility (presently) through existing structures, the BGCSE is one measure, summer bridge is another, SAT another, we already have multiple indicators that we use, we want to look at that holistically."