Year 12 students in Big Picture Learning schools across Australia now use portfolios and interviews to apply for and gain entry to their first choice of university degree. They receive admission on the strength of portfolio evidence mapped to a new non-ATAR qualification, known as the International Big Picture Learning Credential (IBPLC). Since…

How does a policy of free tuition affect student applications to universities? This article assesses how free tuition influences applications in terms of the selectivity of the university, length of the degree program, cost of the program, and application to a program in the STEM field. The study based on a quasi-experimental design was carried…

Dual enrollment (DE) is one of the fastest growing programs that support the high school-to-college transition. Yet, there is limited empirical evidence about its impact on either students' college application choices or admission outcomes. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach on data from two cohorts of ninth-grade students in one…

Scholarship on nonresident enrollment by public research universities has developed in isolation from scholarship on linkages between private high schools and selective private universities. We argue that these literatures are part of a broader story about the competition for students from affluent schools and communities. This manuscript analyzes…

Letters of recommendation from school counselors are required to apply to many selective colleges and universities. Still, relatively little is known about how this non-standardized component may affect equity in admissions. We use cutting-edge natural language processing techniques to algorithmically analyze a national dataset of over 600,000…

Prior research finds that low-income students are less likely to apply to and enroll in four-year colleges or more selective colleges, even after controlling for academic preparation and other background characteristics. The College Board sought to reduce barriers in the college application process through a targeted campaign of brochures and…

The fairness and efficacy of the elite stream in general senior secondary education have long been a contentious issue. Based on the longitudinal data of the students who were enrolled in five senior secondary schools in X City in western China in 2017 and 2018, this study examined the effects of elite class streaming in improving student academic…

This article explores elite high school identities among Palestinian youth in Israel, a stigmatised national ethnic minority. Two research questions guide this study: how do high school students in an elite school perceive and encounter their identity and how does their elitism interact with their identity as members of a stigmatised national…

There is debate over whether Asian American students are admitted to selective colleges and universities at lower rates than white students with similar academic qualifications. However, there have been few empirical investigations of this issue, in large part due to a dearth of data. Here we present the results from analyzing 685,709 applications…

The aim of the research reported on here was to determine the perceptions of school administrators and teachers working at Anatolian high schools on the characteristics of effective schools. The determined perceptions of teachers and administrators were important for creating more efficient educational domains by sharing leadership among…

Background: Women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professions. Even the most promising female students' interest in STEM subjects often decreases during secondary school. Using the framework of the Social Cognitive Career Theory, the present study examined the influences of social agents in female…

This study focuses on the admission criteria of a bachelor of accountancy (BAcc) degree program as one of many factors influencing students' success in graduating in the regulated time frames. The present study used constructivist learning and student engagement theories as connected lenses to explore the effect of admission criteria on…

College access programs have been created to provide students of color opportunities to attend college. The Posse Foundation selects promising urban high school students to attend highly selective colleges and universities across the country. College success is dependent on a variety of factors, two of which are successful social and academic…

Within postsecondary education, we often equate students' need for support with socioeconomic status (SES). There is also recognition of the challenges faced by Black students while navigating higher education. Programmatic and policy efforts to address these issues often focus on singular aspects of students' identities, particularly for low-SES…

Despite adolescent girls' superior school achievement and high career aspirations, fewer women than men achieve career eminence. Understanding early influences on the development of gifted girls' career-related values and aspirations may help to explain this discrepancy in career outcomes. This article reports findings from a qualitative,…