The recent expansion of the overseas education market in China has led to the rise of "Background Promotion Projects" designed to strengthen the applications of elite university aspirants. Based on ethnographic findings of a particular Background Promotion Project, a Chinese high school entrepreneurship competition, this study analyses…

This digest provides descriptive, aggregated statistics related to the experiences of 10 cohorts of graduates of City Schools from school years 2010-11 through 2019-20. The compilers use multiple indicators of college access, including the process of applying for college and financial aid, enrollment in the fall following high school graduation,…

Studies often portray cultural capital as a constant source of advantage. Yet this perspective underemphasizes the importance of activating cultural capital as a prerequisite for elite families to accrue its benefits. Using ethnography and interviews with elite students and parents in two top-performing public high schools in Beijing, I find that…

This study examined the relationship between attending one of the nine New York City (NYC) selective specialized public high schools and graduating from an honors college with a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) degree, compared with honors college graduates who attended any other high school. A causal-comparative study…

What are the benefits and costs of attending a selective public research university instead of a less-selective university or college? This study examines the 2001-2011 Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) program, which guaranteed University of California admission to students in the top four percent of California high school classes. Employing…

In South Korea, higher education is widely available to all people. However, few people with disabilities have received a college education. In 1995, the Higher Education Special Admission for Students with Special Needs policy was implemented to promote opportunities for individuals with disabilities to have access to higher education. Since the…

This article explores challenges in starting, developing, and incorporating partnerships between the secondary and postsecondary education sectors. We use qualitative data from site visits at high schools, district offices, and state colleges across six Florida counties to identify the types of challenges educators faced in various phases of…

A growing body of evidence suggests that vocationally focused programs of study substantially improve high-school completion and longer-run economic success. However, the corresponding recommendations to expand vocational programs may have unintended, negative consequences for low-income, academically successful students (i.e., the "missing…

This article explores how the horizontal differentiation of upper secondary education affects students' transitions after graduation. It builds upon the institutional perspective on education and draws on data from a nationally representative survey. The analysis shows a considerable variation in graduates' patterns of transition according to the…

This brief is the fifth in Baltimore Education Research Consortium's (BERC's) "Launching into Adulthood" series, which examines the trajectories of Baltimore graduates over six years. BERC established a partnership with Baltimore's Promise and the Maryland Longitudinal Data System (MLDS), which has made it possible to examine both…

Social capital is an under investigated resource that many students access to increase their human capital. Within disadvantaged communities, social capital is not readily available to African American male adolescents. This narrative inquiry study explored how social capital impacted the academic achievement of young African-American males during…

The purpose of the paper is to review literature on the challenges and the way forward of the Computerized School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) in Ghana. Literature informs us that the key challenge to the Computerized School Selection and Placement System was the human factor in terms of refusal of parents and students to accept…

'Asian whiz kids' perfect test scores.' 'Selective schools and tiger parents.' These types of headlines highlight the increased visibility of academically successful students from Asian migrant backgrounds, in Australia and other Western countries. They also point to anxiety about the perceived aggressive 'tiger' parenting often associated with…

Using newly available data from the Trajectories in Education and Careers Study, the first longitudinal study on a representative sample of high school students in Russia, we examined the importance of investments in human and cultural capital on students' mathematics and reading standardized examinations, as well as on the likelihood of…

Research on college choice decisions of high school students has increased over the past forty years but has generally centered on demographic characteristics such as race, gender, or socio-economic status of students. There has been little research on the influences on the college choice decisions of high academically achieving students from…