Abstract:

Secondary and Tertiary Education in Spain have been modified in their structure by Law in the last few years. Following these changes in the structure of the studies, the University Entrance Exams have been also modified introducing a new system in which the student’s final mark to apply for a given Degree in a given University is not the same (as it was within the former exams) but it depends on several points: the subjects he/she has taken and the marks he/she obtained in them, the bachelor Degree he/she wants to study and the Area of Knowledge this Degree belong to, and, finally, the public University in which he/she applies for. With all those variables, the Law establishes a polynomial formula which constructs the final mark for the student in every Degree he/she applies for. Obviously, this represents too much information and relatively complicated calculations to be dealt by a young person (17/18 years old) with many decisions to make at the same time.
To pay support to this decision process and to avoid the miscalculations, the University of Oviedo, introduced in November 2009, and recently improved in 2011, a Web Simulator of the Admission Marks to the University. This Web Simulator is a configurable tool that allows the student to calculate the Admission Mark to the Degrees in the University of Oviedo selected by him/her, given the marks obtained in the subjects in the University Entrance Exams and the overall mark in the Baccalaureate.
The tool is very flexible and accessible, and it provides the students further information about the way the mark is calculated, the weights of every subject in the final mark, and the so-called cutting-mark in the recent past course. This is the mark obtained by the last admitted student in the past course: public universities in Spain do not fix a minimum mark to admit students, but fix a number n of positions, so that the top n students are admitted. This cutting-mark varies every year, depending on the offer and the demand, but it is an important informative tool that helps the student to position him/her-self in a fictional list of admission.
This Web Simulator obtained an important success from the beginning, not only in the regional area but also at national level. Therefore, in the course 2009-2010 it was imitated but most of the public universities in Spain, even a website gathering the links to all this simulators was uploaded, after an attempt of producing a national-level simulator failed (mainly by political problems). In this communication we describe the main uses of the web simulator and the possible improvements in the future.

Keywords:

Web Simulator, University Entrance, Students Orientation.