Recruiting the right engineering students

Excellent research requires excellent teaching, and excellent teaching requires excellent research. Recruiting the right students is a powerful measure to enhance the number of successful graduations and to reduce drop-out. The search for the right students is not limited to German Higher Engineering Education, but can be found in any higher educational system. This paper focuses on the most suitable approaches for German Universities to select the best engineering students when allocating study places for an education in the field of engineering. With recourse to pertinent quality factors we analyze the possibilities and limits of each approach and reflect on their efficacy in the mirror of pertinent quality factors.