Studies at British Columbia universities show that although transfer students perform well at universities, they tend to achieve somewhat lower grades in university courses than direct entry students. The B.C. Council on Admissions and Transfer (BCCAT) wanted to develop a better understanding of this disparity in grades and asked the Office of Analytical Studies at Simon Fraser University (SFU) to conduct a comparative academic performance study of direct entry secondary school students and college transfer students admitted to SFU. The purpose of the study is to determine whether this difference between transfer students and direct entry students still exists when controlling for secondary school performance. This report compares the academic performance of two distinct admission groups of students who graduated from a B.C. secondary school in the five-year period from 1992 to 1996 and were admitted to SFU from 1992 to 1999. Each of these groups chose an alternate path to SFU: 7,335 direct-entry secondary school students entered SFU from a B.C. high school within one year of high school graduation (referred to as "direct entry" or "BC12" students), whereas 3,109 college transfer students entered SFU after completing approximately 30 or more college transfer credits in a B.C. college (referred to as "college transfer" or "BCCOL" students). Among the key findings were that B.C. secondary school entrants were admitted to SFU with a 78.3% average high school grade. This is nearly 10 percentage points higher than the average for B.C. college transfer students at 68.6%. Appended to this document are: (1) Preliminary Study; (2) Distribution of Students by Cohort and Secondary School Attended Distribution of B.C. College Transfer Students by College; (3) File Layouts; (4) Tables: Profile of Students; (6) Comparative Summary of Indicators; (7) Regression Results; (8) Comparative Summary of Course Grade Means (Comparative Summary of Selected Course Grades by High School Achievement Level, Comparative Summary of Selected Course Grades by 10% High School Average Grade Ranges); (9) Academic Performance Charts by High School Average; and (10) Course Grade Charts by High School Average. (Contains 8 figures and 18 tables.)