Partial guide

There is little doubt that the past academic performance of a student is a partial guide to future success: the primary New Zealand reference on this subject. "Success and Failure at the University"² ably testifies to this. This document together with independent evidence³ also suggests that the correlation between entrance qualifications and academic success is a moderate positive one.

In short, entrance qualifications alone are not necessarily predictive of success at the university; they may with equal justification be interpreted to indicate how far along the educational road the student has travelled.

When we become more specific in our questions as to effect of past academic performance on university success, answers become more imprecise: this is probably the combined result of imprecision in the questions that are asked, together with inadequate research evidence.