Lui-Ping (most people just called her Jasmin), a recent master’s graduate, had decided to return home to Malaysia after graduation. After a short job search, she obtained a job with the ministry of education. One of Jasmin’s first assignments was to help set the cutoff score for the national entrance exam for the three most sought-after public universities in Kuala Lumpur (the capital city of Malaysia). The three universities received tens of thousands of applications every year. It was no wonder; anyone who was admitted received free tuition. In addition, the top employers from across Malaysia (all of Southeast Asia, in fact) seemed to focus much of their recruitment effort for new employees at these three top public universities. Therefore, if a student were able to get into one of these three universities, he or she would be “set for life.” 

The ministry of education, however, had just recently reformatted the entrance exam to cover several new topics. As a result, a new cutoff score had to be “recommended” to the universities. Ultimately, the universities were free to choose their own cutoff scores, but they relied heavily on the expertise provided by the ministry of education, as that is where much of their funding came from. Therefore, Jasmin was asked to help determine the appropriate cutoff score for the three universities. This could be difficult, she thought, as the three universities seemed to be so different. The first was a technical university, focusing on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) disciplines. The second university was a more traditional liberal arts university, with a wide breadth of offerings and a much smaller student body. The third university had a strong focus on the professional degrees, with emphases in business, social work, medicine, law, and education. These all seemed so different. How could she set a single cutoff score for all three universities? It was time to sit down with her new boss and develop more clarification on what she should do next. 

Questions 

1. Should Jasmin recommend the same cutoff score for each university or should different cutoff scores be recommended? 

2. Instead of having one overall cutoff score, might it be better to have separate cutoff scores for different portions of the exam? 

3. Should Jasmin take into consideration the other criteria used by each of the universities to select its students? If so, how? 

4. Given the large sample of data Jasmin will have to work with, how might she incorporate some empirical data into the cutoff score decision? 

5. Who should be the SMEs for Jasmin in helping her to set the cutoff score(s)?