Is there any influence by the admission category to the learning outcomes achievement?

Recent emphasis on monitoring student outcomes to continuous quality improvement (CQI) of an academic curriculum has been influential in higher education. However, the term of continuous quality should be further anticipated with the experience and previous knowledge of student´s pre-university qualifications. Very little work been studied on this correlation of pre-university background to the students education in the university. The quality assurance process of an institution has included student admission but the quantitative assessments directly to the learning outcome are still very limited. Hence, this paper explored the influence of student pre-university education background on the learning outcome pattern throughout the four years of undergraduate study. The study involves 97 civil engineering graduates and categorized into their pre-university admission namely matriculation/science foundation, diploma and Malaysian Higher School certificate (Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia (STPM)). The learning outcome achievements during their four years of study were analyzed and show an important trend of relationship with their pre-university experiences. The study has demonstrated that, in their first year of study, STPM group were able to achieve better learning outcomes than matriculation group but both groups has performed equal learning achievement throughout their four years of study and similarly improved at the final year.