Exploring the Academic Preparation and Performance to the Comprehensive Examination of First-Year Engineering Students

Abstract

A comprehensive examination is an academic exercise that aims to determine students’performance relevant to their achievements in the previous years of their studies. In the oldcurriculum of the College of Engineering at Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges, Philippines,a comprehensive examination is given to second-year students of all engineering programs.With the change in curriculum due to the K-12 implementation, this comprehensive examinationis being planned to be given to first-year engineering students. This study aims to explorethe influence of students’ academic preparation and academic performance on the comprehensiveexamination of first-year engineering students. The researcher analyzed the datafrom 468 first-year engineering students for the academic year 2018–2019 to determine thedegree of correlation between their academic preparation, academic performance, and comprehensiveexamination. Findings showed that senior high school (SHS) tracks have no relationshipwith the academic performance of civil, electronics, and mechanical engineeringstudents. However, for electrical engineering students, there is a relationship between theSHS tracks and their academic performance. Also, the college entrance test (CET) and academicperformance showed a relationship with the comprehensive examination. Findingsrevealed that higher ratings in the CET and academic performance tend to go with higherratings in the comprehensive examination and vice versa. Thus, a comprehensive examinationis an effective way to determine the extent of achievement of students in engineeringmathematics and sciences. This study did not consider any other factors that may affect theresult of the comprehensive examination.