To be able to enrol in an honours program at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), a weighted average mark for one�s final year of undergraduate study has to exceed a particular threshold value. Students are then ranked according to this weighted average mark, with entry into the honours program being offered on a top-down basis providing teaching resources and space constraints permit. Students who have not completed their undergraduate studies at UKZN are also able to apply for entry into an honours program at UKZN. Not having a UKZN-based undergraduate mark on which to perform a suitable ranking, their requirement for entry becomes a lot more subjective in nature. Is UKZN compromising the quality of their honours program by offering places to these so-called �foreign� students at the expense of other ` home-grown� UKZN based undergraduate applicants who have been refused an entry because their weighted average mark for their final year of undergraduate study did not exceed the required threshold value? Can one lower the threshold value for entry into honours for UKZN undergraduates and be assured that these home-grown students will perform as well if not better than the cohort of foreign students who are currently taking their place? \nBy lowering the requirement for entry into honours for these home grown students, one is being asked to predict how they will perform in honours based on a prediction model that will have been created from a sample of UKZN undergraduate students that does not include this new cohort of students. In a regression context one is being asked to predict outside the range of one�s collected data. Apart from having a lower weighted average mark, this new cohort of students may differ in other unobservable ways from those UKZN students who are currently being allowed into an honours program. A Heckman selection model needs to be fitted in order to overcome a possible self -selection bias that may arise because the subpopulation we are wanting to predict from -namely those new students who will now be able to enter an honours program�may be significantly different from the current population of UKZN undergraduate students who are being allowed to enter an honours program.

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