New admission requirements to strengthen student quality and reduce dropout rates

After a lengthy dialogue, the school management team has decided to introduce a minimum mark requirement of 7 on of all the school’s degree programmes. In future, students applying to Aarhus BSS through quota 1 must thus have an average grade of at least 7.  The new admission requirements come into effect as of the 2020 admissions and they form part of the strategic development of the school’s degree programmes, says Dean Thomas Pallesen.

“First of all, the requirements are meant to reflect that we offer high-quality degree programmes and that we wish to strengthen the study-related prerequisites of our admitted students. We are also looking into the admission requirements of quota 2. Students who did not achieve an average grade of 7 in their upper secondary school leaving examination, but who still have the right prerequisites for achieving academic success, will still be welcome at Aarhus BSS. For this reason, we believe that the new requirements will serve to strengthen the quality of our graduates as well as to reduce the dropout rates - which are too high on some of our degree programmes,” says Thomas Pallesen.

In the last intake, the average grade of the admitted students was already more than 7 on most of the school’s programmes. This means that the programmes will be affected very differently by the new requirements - and some not at all, says Thomas Pallesen: 

“We are very aware that the new requirements may pose a challenge for a few of our programmes, for example in Herning. However, during the past few years BTECH has developed a strong research environment, which means that a lot can happen before 2020. Naturally, we in the executive team will be monitoring the development closely together with the department management team. However, we do believe that BTECH will also benefit from the new requirements in the long term,” he concludes.