Increasing the proportion of prospective students who enter college has been a long-standing objective of colleges. This article summarizes findings concerning the effects and costs of various tactics that public agencies should employ to influence student enrollment decisions. First, the paper describes three phases in the student choice process…

Changes in high school graduates' college choices between 1972 and 1980 were investigated, with attention to the importance of different enrollment influences and the distribution of these influences. Analysis of the National Longitudinal Study (NLS) of the High School Class of 1972 and the High School and Beyond (HSB) surveys revealed that 46.4%…

The obstacles to aid-and-access research on minority students include: inadequate models of the decision process, heterogeneous subpopulations, and the momentary equality of 1977. Until research yields qualitative knowledge of why similarly situated teenagers make different decisions about college, analysis of minority aid-and-entry decisions will…

Research on factors that influence college choice, including sociologic and economic explanations, is reviewed. It is suggested that the following four factors strongly affect college choice: family background, student achievement or ability, some college attributes, and labor-market conditions. School context and college effects moderately affect…