The study of classification consistency of transition to higher education examination according to the cut-off scores obtained from different methods

The way in which the passing standards of the examinations that lead to the future of students and a society are determined has an important place in terms of the reliability and validity of classifications such as successful/unsuccessful or passed/failed and objective evaluation of educational outputs. It was aimed in this study to examine the consistency of decisions taken for the candidates as "can enter LYS (Undergraduate Placement Exam)/cannot enter LYS" based on the cutoff score (180.00) used in YGS (Transition to Higher Education Exam) in Turkey in comparison with the classification consistency of cutoff scores obtained from Borderline Group, Contrasting Group and Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve method. The data of the study were obtained from a group of 167 candidates who were studying in the twelfth grade participating in the 2015 YGS, and a group of seven experts who evaluated these candidates. Before the exam, the expert group asked whether these candidates could pass the second LYS successfully in the 2015 YGS and, accordingly, they were classified as successful, unsuccessful or in-borderline. After the exam, the highest of the different score types the candidates received in the 2015 YGS was selected and the level of concordance between the expert opinions was examined and later the cutoff scores were obtained separately for the different standardization methods. The findings of the research revealed that the cutoff scores obtained by different methods had similar values, that the indexes of classification consistency of cutoff points obtained by all methods according to the YGS cutoff score criteria were high, and that the classification consistency indices gave lower results when expert opinions were taken as criteria. The Higher Education Council has gone to some new regulations in the university entrance examination system to be implemented starting from 2018 and a transition to a one-stage examination with two sessions has been made. In the new system, the condition of entering the Domain Proficiency Test is again "the minimum score of 180.00" from the test in the first session. Due to the fact that the cut-off score remains unchanged, research findings are expected to present a different perspective on the debate on the preparation of new examinations