Abstract
This paper compares the grades on the Enade exams from 2012 to 2014 of students who were accepted into higher education through affirmative action, who received the ProUni scholarship, or who received the government sponsored student loans (FIES) with the grades of students in the same class who did not receive the corresponding benefit. The mean of the standardized exam grades (both general and specific exams) are used for the comparison. The paper defines a limit of equivalence between grades as the difference of the mean grade of the 5% students with grades just above the mean and of the 5% students with grades just below the mean of all students. Differences below this limit of equivalence are considered of no practical relevance. Under this definition, the performance of students who were accepted through affirmative action is equivalent to that of their classmates who did not receive such benefit, as is the performance of students who received the FIES student loan. Students who received the ProUni scholarship performed better than their classmates.
Higher education; Affirmative action; ProUni; FIES; Enade; Performance