Do early freshmen graduate earlier than late ones? Enrollment promptness and tardiness as indicators of academic success.

Does enrolling in the first days in a degree course reflect the general character of the student, or rather how motivated is the student to enroll? Are enthusiasm and initial motivation decisive on the final result of the university career? These and other questions are the topics of the paper whose goal is to understand whether promptness and delay in enrollments are indicators of success in an academic career. Identifying indicators of success or failure in registration data, and understanding their role, can be fundamental in preventing failures. The study analyzes the university careers of over 11,000 freshmen of the three-year degrees of the University of Eastern Piedmont in the years from 2001 to 2014. Beside classic tools such as logit models, machine learning techniques such as the random forrest regression are used. The study results demonstrate that promptness and delay in enrollment reflect factors that affect the final outcome of the university career.