Agent-Based Simulation for University Students Admission: Medical Colleges in Jordan Universities

Abstract

Medical colleges are considered one of the most competitive schools compared to other university departments. Most countries adopted the particular application process to ensure maximum fairness between students. For example, in UK students apply through the UCAS system, and most of USA universities use either Coalition App or Common App, on the other hand, some universities use their own websites. In fact, a Unified Admission Application process is adopted in Jordan for allocating the students to the public universities. However, the universities and colleges in Jordan are evaluating the applicants by using merely the centralized system without considering the socioeconomics factor, as the high school GPA is the essential player their selection mechanism. In this paper, the authors will use an Agent Based model (ABM) to simulate different scenarios by using Netlogo software (v. 6.3). The authors used different parameters such as the family-income and the high school GPA in order to maximize the utilities of the fairness and equalities of universities admission. The model is simulated into different scenarios. For instance, students with low family income and high GPA given them the priority in studying medicine comparing with same high school GPA and higher family-income, as a results, after several rotations of the simulation the reputation of medical schools are identified based on students’ preferences and seats’ allocated as it shows that high ranking universities are mainly allocated with have high cut-off GPA score.