The Impact of SES among Malaysian Matriculation Students in Selecting University and Engineering Program

This paper discusses the impact of socio-economic status (SES) among Malaysian matriculation students’ on their decision in selecting university and engineering program they want to pursue. The research was conducted at two local matriculation colleges and 496 students were participated as respondents. Self-developed questionnaire has been distributed through the Counseling Unit of the matriculation centre. The data was collected and analyzed by descriptive and independent sample t- test. The findings showed that low SES students have stronger determination to pursue their studies at tertiary level compared to high SES students. However, both the low and high SES students showed similar trend of perception towards Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) reputation and its engineering program. There is no significant difference between these two groups in term of criteria in selecting their preference university and course program. Both groups chose the engineering program because of their personality and interest toward the field and information from the media report and the financial support.