University admission marks in Catalonia: Some highlights from the empirical research

The results of the examinations taken by graduated high school students who want to enrol at a Catalan university are here studied. To do so, the authors address several issues related to the equity of the system: reliability of grading, difficulty and discrimination power of the exams. The general emphasis is put upon the concurrent research and empirical evidence about the properties of the examination items and scores. After a discussion about the limitations of the exams' format and appropriateness of the instruments used in the study, the article concludes with some suggestions to improve such examinations.