Forecasting New Student Candidates Using the Random Forest Method

Abstract

College education institutions regularly hold new student admissions activities, and the number of new students can increase and can also decrease. University of PGRI Semarang (UPGRIS) on the development of new student admissions for the 2014/2015 academic year up to 2018/2019 with so many admissions selection stages. To meet the minimum comparison requirements between the number of students with the development of human resources, facilities, and infrastructure, it is necessary to predict how much the number of students increases each year. To make a prediction system or forecasting, the number of prospective new students required a good forecasting method and sufficiently precise calculations to predict the number of prospective students who register. In this study, the method to be taken is the Random Forest method. For the evaluation of forecasting models used Random Sampling and Cross-validation. The parameter used is Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), and Coefficient of Determination (R2). The results of this study obtained the five highest and lowest study programs in the admission of new students. Therefore, UPGRIS will make a new strategy for the five lowest study programs so that the desired number of new students is achieved