Machine Learning Methods to Predict the Academic Performance of Pre-Clinical Dental Students Based on Pre-University...

Information regarding the prediction of dentistry students' academic performances using machine learning (ML) techniques is lacking. The objective of this study was to predict the academic performance of pre-clinical dentistry students using ML techniques based on their pre-university information.

A total of 96 data points, including graduation years, genders, high school grade point average (GPA), step 1 university exam score (Step 1 UES), Step 2 UES, total UES, university exam ratings (UER), high school types (HSTypes), hometowns, parent educations (PEs), and parent incomes (PIs) from dentistry grads, were collected. Various ML regression techniques were validated to predict the academic performance of dentistry students in this cross-sectional study.

Preliminary findings from the dataset indicated that UESs or rankings were more predictive than other demographic features, such as HSType, gender, graduation year, and hometown. The selection of target variables has resulted in two major studies. The initial study employed overall preclinical scores as the target variable, whereas the subsequent study utilized letter grades from specific preclinical courses, including dental morphology manipulation, dental materials I, prosthodontics I, and prosthodontics II, for ML models. The performance measures of these models demonstrated the capability of ML models to evaluate student performance in relation to demographics, high school performance, and admission scores. Regression models exhibiting an R ² value of 0.74 or greater, alongside a classification accuracy beyond 70% for a balanced dataset of preclinical subject scores, demonstrated that ML models can predict student achievement in both overall and subject-specific grades.

The present study revealed the utilization of ML techniques to predict the academic performance of dentistry students successfully.