Admission and Enrollment Commission
The meeting brought together representatives from Admissions and Analysis departments of the universities in the Council of Rectors, who analyzed the transformations that the 2023 Admissions Process will undergo, with the introduction of the PAES.
The head of the commission, Ruth Candia, stated that the work carried out at this meeting is fundamental "to see how universities can make better decisions" and contribute to optimizing the opportunities for applicants.
Representatives from the 30 institutions that make up the Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities (CRUCH) met this May 3 and 4 at the Santiago headquarters of the University of Los Lagos, to analyze the changes that the 2023 Admission Process will experience, in which the new Higher Education Access Test (PAES) will be introduced.
This University Data Analysis Workshop was convened by the CRUCH Admission and Enrollment Commission and was inaugurated by the acting general secretary of the Council, Marcela Cifuentes.
“We hope that this workspace will allow our universities to better face this scenario of changes, addressing challenging issues linked to this process and making available, with the usual generosity, the experience of university teams to the Access System,” said Marcela Cifuentes.
In a video message, the rector in charge of the commission, Diego Durán (Catholic University of Maule), stated that “this work is tremendously important (…) Everything we can build together will allow us to have the most appropriate system, even though the transformations are always rapid.”.
Meanwhile, the commission's president, Ruth Candia, Director of Student Academic Records at the University of La Frontera, addressed the meeting's objectives. "We have gathered to analyze issues and data related to the changes in the 2023 admissions process, to see how universities can make better decisions regarding cut-off scores, minimum weighted scores, and other factors," she explained.
Technical answers
Ruth Candia said that this analysis is fundamental to "evaluate how these changes affect students the least, so as not to leave applicants out of the system and to avoid harming them by taking incorrect measures.".
The chairwoman of the committee stated that there are still many questions about the 2023 Admission Process.
“We need more work on the Access System, but also on the more technical side now, with the processing of the data,” Candia said.
The Director of Student Academic Records at the University of La Frontera explained that the analyses developed during this workshop will be shared at an upcoming meeting of the Access System, which will include the CRUCH universities, the affiliated private institutions, and the Department of Educational Evaluation, Measurement and Registration (DEMRE) of the University of Chile.
“Our idea is to raise any doubts that arise from these preliminary analyses of the databases and present them at that time, so that we can have technical answers related to the information gathering we have done in these two days,” he said.
Productive days
The workshop took place over two days and included the participation of Admissions delegates from the 30 CRUCH universities, along with representatives from the Analysis units of various institutions of the Council.
Initially, the scenario and context of the changes that the 2023 admissions process will face were presented, "with the objective that all delegates and analysts have the same common ground of information," Candia explained.
Subsequently, the participants organized themselves into groups, according to the northern, central, coastal, and southern macro-regions. Each team reviewed questions related to the 2023 admissions process and analyzed databases of previous admissions. The group work was then shared in a plenary session.
Cristian Zurita, head of the Institutional Analysis Unit at the University of Atacama, praised the meeting, stating that "it has been a very productive day, because it allows us to connect scenarios related to the administration of the new test.".
For her part, Loreto Valenzuela, Director of Admissions at Arturo Prat University, stated that “these sessions are very productive, because they serve to learn about the different perspectives of universities on this topic and to share experiences, which makes the analyses much more enriching.”.
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