The transition from high school to the postsecondary educational environment is a challenge for any student. There are new places, new faces, and whole new ways of doing things. Not only that, but transitioning students suddenly find they must advocate for themselves instead of having programs and services planned for them. For students who are…

The purpose of this paper is to test the premise that there is a significant correlation between Praxis1 scores and SAT scores among African American students who are applying for admission into the teacher education program. Data for the study included the Praxis 1 (reading, writing and math) scores and SAT (reading, writing and math) scores of…

It is generally accepted that the undergraduate cumulative point average (UCPA) is associated with graduate performance of the same discipline. Less known, however, is how good the UCPA at predicting graduate performance in a different discipline. This paper discusses a study on the relationship between UCPA, undergraduate program of study, and…

The inequities of residential segregation and their impact on educational opportunity are a national problem, but greater metropolitan Boston has a particularly problematic history in terms of the extent to which racial segregation has deeply divided the city into separate and unequal systems of opportunity. Despite decades of policy efforts to…

Research indicates that students whose parents did not attend college are more likely than their non first-generation counterparts to be less academically prepared for college, to have less knowledge of how to apply for college and for financial assistance, and to have more difficulty in acclimating themselves to college once they enroll. They are…

Numerous studies have found a host of factors that are likely to result in more successful applications to graduate schools. This study was a retrospective examination of the variables that distinguish graduate students who believed they were better prepared for graduate school. We examined several of these factors, including variables associated…

The Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE) regularly evaluates the experience of international students in Canada through a benchmarking survey. Canada First 2009 represents the fourth time CBIE has conducted this research. Previous editions appeared in 1988, 1999 and 2004. This year's survey used a revised questionnaire similar to…

A review of the medical student selection literature and our own past research (Lowe, Kerridge, Bore, Munro and Powis (2001) has indicated that competent and ethical practice of medicine requires doctors to possess a range of personal qualities in addition to high-level academic ability. A three-part test battery called the Personal Qualities…

Large socioeconomic and ethnic disparities exist in college admissions. This paper demonstrates that by systematically accounting for the effect of socioeconomic circumstance on pre-college achievement, colleges can substantially reduce these disparities. A conceptual model distinguishes students' realized achievement from their underlying ability…

The role of testing in determining college admissions and the impact of that testing on high school students are commanding increasing attention. There is emerging evidence that admissions decisions made solely on the basis of high school record can serve the college as well or better than decisions based, at least in part, on scores obtained on…

In an effort to standardize academic application procedures, the Standardized Letter of Recommendation (SLR) was developed to capture important cognitive and noncognitive qualities of graduate school candidates. The SLR consists of seven scales ("knowledge," "analytical skills," "communication skills,"…

The Standardized Letter of Recommendation (SLR), a 28-item form, was created by ETS to supplement the qualitative rating of graduate school applicants' nonacademic qualities with a quantitative approach. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the following psychometric properties of the SLR using the Rasch rating-scale model: dimensionality,…

Most Americans expect the nation's colleges and universities to promote the goal of social mobility to make it possible for anyone with ability and motivation to succeed. But according to Robert Haveman and Timothy Smeeding, income-related gaps both in access to and in success in higher education are large and growing. In the top-tier colleges and…

Unmet demand for tertiary education is difficult to define and to estimate. In this report, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001 Survey of Education, Training and Information Technology are used to shed light on defining and enumerating unmet demand. Unmet demand occurs when potential students apply for a place at university or in…

This is the fourth monograph in the admissions models series. Based on discussions at a June 2004 conference and conversations with numerous admissions experts, this publication describes different approaches to individualized review and covers topics such as standardizing elements of the application, reader training and guidelines, consistency…