2-4 February 2015- Istanbul, Turkey Proceedings of INTCESS15- 2 nd International Conference on Education and Social Sciences 521 ISBN: 978-605-64453-2-3 INDICATORS OF STUDENTS’ SUCCESS AT HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS Heba Khoshaim 1 *, Tasneem Ali 2 *1 Asst. Prof. Dr. Heba Khoshaim, Prince Sultan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, hkhoshaim@pscw.psu.edu.sa 2 Asst. Prof. Dr. Tasneem Ali, Prince Sultan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, tali@pscw.psu.edu.sa *Corresponding author Abstract Higher education institutions evaluate new applicants using pre-attained educational measurements, such as high school Grade Point Average (GPA) or scores of accredited standardized test. Based on such measurements, students will be accepted or denied acceptance to universities and colleges. Although there is no unified agreement among higher education institutions on what kind of measurements should be used in the admission processes, all aim to select those who are expected to succeed in their academic programs. In other words, admission criteria should be valid indicators of students’ readiness or future performance. The reported study here looked at the validity of admission criteria of Prince Sultan University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This study examined three explanatory variables as predictors of the Grade Point Average (GPA) of students at the end of their first year in the university. It was concluded that the regression model explained up to 34% of the variation in first year GPA. Moreover, each of the three variables is considered statistically significant, except that the influence of high school GPA is bigger than the influence of the national standardized test used in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, when the dummy variable–gender–is excluded from the model, only 27 % of the variation in first year GPA is explained. Keywords: Higher education institutions; admission criteria; standardized tests; grade point average; preparatory year program 1 INTRODUCTION Higher education institutions use admission criteria as indicators to select the most suitable students for their academic programs. Applicants who are interested to join higher education institutions should submit academic documentations as evidence of their academic status. This includes, but is not limited to, high school Grade Point Average (HS-GPA) and national and international standardized test scores. Researchers and educators around the world assess admission criteria to ensure that these are true indicators of students’ readiness. In many cases, admission criteria have been shown to predict students’ success in their first year at colleges; for example, the standardized test Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) has been supported as a predictor of students’ success in higher education institutions in the United States of America (Geiser & Studley, 2002; Kobrin, Patterson, Shaw, Mattern, & Barbuti, 2008; Patterson, Mattern, & Kobrin, 2009). Nevertheless, such criteria have suffered from educational criticisms (Maruyama, 2012) and more research is needed to support the selection process for higher education institutions. Prince Sultan University (PSU) is a private institution located at the capital city of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. PSU inspires to “become the leading non-profit, private university in the Middle East, providing a quality education equal to other reputable universities in the world” (PSU Vision statement). As a process to reach its goal, PSU admits students based on three factors: High school Grade Point Average (HS-GPA), the national standardized General Aptitude Test (GAT) score, and PSU Admission test. By using such criteria, PSU aims to improve and support the process of selecting newly admitted students. Admission criteria intend to minimize the number of high school graduates who struggle in PSU classes and admit