College staff performing recruiting tasks without collaboration or shared knowledge formation creates redundancies and knowledge gaps. This study sought to investigate causes and find solutions to recruitment gaps and redundancies. Participants and data collected in Cycle 1 consisted of interviews with college staff and recent high school…

This guest perspective argues that converting in-person summer pre-college program participants into matriculated, degree-seeking undergraduate students at that same institution is a multi-step process that involves: 1) strategic pre-college program recruitment, 2) a curated and well-rounded summer pre-college experience that is both academically…

While there is a growing body of literature related to the benefits of participation in career and technical education (CTE) in high school, there remains a dearth of causal work in this area. Relying on administrative data from Baltimore City Public Schools, which uses a ranking system with a strict cut score to assign students into CTE-focused…

There are a growing number of creative new ways that college admission professionals are reaching students and their families, but often, experts say, the biggest payoff can come from the simplest technique: building relationships. And those relationships may extend beyond the short-lived connections to the student who is inquiring or enrolling,…

Profiles describing a high school's quality and composition are one component of the undergraduate admission application to selective colleges, offering admission officers insight into a student's academic environment. This study explores alignment between the data admission officers seek in a profile to support their holistic evaluations and the…

We analyze eight letters of recommendation written by high school teachers for first-generation college students, so as to illustrate narrative strategies that can make letters more effective in providing support for students' college applications. Amidst recent criticisms of the limited utility of letters in college admissions, we argue that they…

2019 was a bit different from previous years for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) Research. Since they had six larger-scale research projects (of which several were calendared over the summer months), they did not want to overly burden their members with surveys. This resulted in four 60-Second…

The COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020 as high school seniors were receiving their college admission notifications for fall. Many postsecondary institutions shifted outreach efforts to online formats. This qualitative study examines how virtual recruitment at an emerging HSI incorporates culturally responsive practices from the perspective of…

The pandemic period of the past two years has altered many aspects of the high school and college experience for students. With more emphasis on hybrid and virtual experiences, how has this impacted the college search process for high school students? What do they value, what do they need to know, and what information have they seen? Ruffalo Noel…

Low-socioeconomic status (SES) students are underrepresented at selective colleges, but the role that admissions offices play is poorly understood. Because admissions offices often have inconsistent information on high school contexts, we conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine whether providing detailed information on high school…

This was an exploratory qualitative study utilizing tenets of phenomenology to examine the lived experiences of front-line student services professionals in Admissions and Financial Aid and their dilemmas in interpreting and implementing California Assembly Bill 540 (2001) in their interactions with undocumented students. Front-line student…

The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRO) examined eight areas of research interest to our members in 2018. They had enough longitudinal data to make comparisons of 2018 data to years past. For example, they repeated the registrar's career profile report and learned there will be a large number of…

Confident that understanding and employing new approaches to assessment is a top priority for admissions professionals, the Secondary School Admission Test Board (SSATB) recently launched a Think Tank on the Future of Admission Assessment, with a two-year timeline and a charge to educate its membership and inspire greater innovation in admissions…

This article reviews selected research on successes of homeschooled students over the past decade. The article raises several methods issues, especially related to sampling issues and recent changes in some state laws. In addition the article reviews research collected from college admission's officers' on their perceptions and attitudes relate to…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact on undergraduate college admissions decisions at selective U.S. colleges and universities of student enrolment in the Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) programs of international schools. A total of 30 interviews were conducted by the researcher with admissions personnel…