Assessing Scientific Skills of Applicants for a Master’s Degree Program

Assessment centers have highly contributed to the quality of employee selection, training, and development in organizations. While many assessment centers are developed for business settings, they are also used as selection method in educational settings, although not as widely. Most assessment centers mainly focus on social skills. Those that simulate real problems that may be faced in the job show the highest validity. Current assessment formats for applicants of master’s degree programs usually test core knowledge and social skills. However, they may underemphasize other important domains for master students, like scientific skills and the integration of scientific skills, social skills and core knowledge. We propose that for simulating real problems one may face at a master’s degree program it is not sufficient to measure merely social skills. In this article we will discuss an extension of conventional assessment centers. We will show the design of an assessment center for the master’s degree program ‘Financial Management and Controlling’ at FHWien University of Applied Sciences Vienna, which additionally measures the scientific skills of the applicants in the field of finance. We developed the following two dimensions of scientific skills: a) scientific method skills, b) argumentation skills and reflectivity. This method should help to simulate real problems one may face at a master’s degree program and therefore to increase the validity of the assessment.