Publications

Executive Summary

Students who move from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) into the University of Toronto (UofT) provide ideal cases for examining characteristics and outcomes of a range of transfer students. In 2020, Scott Davies compared transfer students and direct-entry students using a dataset with 29,000 former TDSB students who attended UofT. However, that data set lacked transfer flags and measures of transfer credits awarded. This report describes a new study that examines a second dataset on 18,000 students in the TDSB-UofT pathway. It contains similar measures, but also contains transfer credit flags and measures numbers of credits awarded. This new dataset is used to address six research questions: 1) What is the overall proportion of transfer students among undergraduates in the TDSB-UofT pathway? 2) From which institutions do they transfer into UofT? 3) Do transfer and direct entry students differ in their demographics and high school academic profiles? 4) How many transfer students are awarded some credits at UofT for previous course work, and how many credits did they receive? 5) Do transfer and direct entry students differ in their academic outcomes at UofT, and 6) Do transfer credits awarded influence those outcomes?