Addendum to a Case Study on Using Spreadsheets to Facilitate Committee Discussions and to Assist Committee Decisions in an Academic Setting: Graduate Admissions of Applicants with Degrees from Chinese Universities

Abstract

This paper updates an Excel-based example in a recent case study published in Spreadsheets in Education. The original example was intended to assist graduate admission committees outside China in assessing the academic quality of individual Chinese universities in the application files. China being the top country of origin of international students in many English-speaking countries, the official implementation of China's Double First-Class Initiative (DFCI) in 2017, aimed at improving the global recognition of Chinese universities, has provided valuable additional information for such committees to consider. The additional information includes not only the names of all designated universities in two different categories, but also the corresponding discipline or disciplines in each university for existing strengths or future potentials. As an addendum to the original example, this paper first justifies the update. It then shows how publicly available information under the DFCI can be organized in an Excel setting for improving the original example.