While considerable evidence has accumulated on state-funded merit-based scholarships, research on the effects of specific scholarship design choices has been thin, perhaps in part because cross-state comparisons are difficult. As one of the only states to enact major changes in the design of its merit-based scholarship program, Georgia provides a…

The United States has widely experimented with merit-based financial aid to make college more accessible and affordable for its youth. Varying in design and benefits, these state-run programs subsidize college costs for academically meritorious high-school graduates. While broadly linked to higher college attendance the distribution of aid…

Professional school counselors play a role in helping students and families make college decisions. One student group that may have unique challenges are student athletes who wish to compete at the collegiate level. These students have additional requirements, beyond traditional admission procedures, to meet eligibility requirements. The purpose…

Do students respond to sticker prices or actual prices when applying to college? These costs differ for students eligible for financial aid. Students who do not understand this may not apply to some colleges because of the perceived high cost. We test for this form of "sticker shock" using College Board data on SAT scores sent, as a…

We replicate and extend prior work on Florida's Bright Futures merit aid scholarship to consider its effect on college enrollment and degree completion. We estimate causal impacts using a regression discontinuity design to exploit SAT thresholds that strongly determine eligibility. We find no positive impacts on attendance or attainment, and…

Local-level, place-based scholarships -- synonymous with "promise" scholarships -- are a policy strategy to improve college completion in the United States by directing financial aid to students in a particular school, district, or geographical area. There are currently upwards of 90 place-based scholarship programs across the US, most…

Purpose: A fuller understanding of the information search behaviour of prospective students in the digital era is one of the keys to success in university recruitment. The purpose of this paper is to investigate students' university choice factors in relation to the online environment. Design/methodology/approach: In total, 637 samples from 11…

This study evaluates the effect of Florida's Bright Future Program on student college choices. We used regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of two award levels, which had different SAT/ACT thresholds, on the probability of students choosing in-state public colleges and four-year public colleges. The most consistent and robust…

Twenty-one US states currently offer some form of merit-based postsecondary financial aid, although the generosity and eligibility requirements of merit aid programs varies from state to state. This article uses nationally representative data from high school students in the early 1990s and the early 2000s to evaluate the relationship between the…

Recent federal and state education policy has targeted community colleges as an affordable venue to increase postsecondary attainment. We examined a state program aimed at increasing community college enrollment, the Missouri A+ Schools Program, which provided eligible graduates from participating high schools the opportunity to earn a scholarship…

The cost of attending college has risen steadily over the past 30 years, making financial aid an important determinant of college choice for many students and a subject of concern for colleges and state governments. In this paper, we estimate the effect of rule-based merit aid assignment on students' enrollment decisions at the University of Iowa.…

The Texas Ten Percent Plan (TTP) provides students in the top 10 percent of their high-school class with automatic admission to any public university in the state, including the two flagship schools, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M. Texas created the policy in 1997 after a federal appellate court ruled that the state's previous…

This paper quantifies the extent of student-college "academic undermatch," which occurs when a student's academic credentials permit them access to a college or university that is more selective than the postsecondary alternative they actually choose. Using a nationally representative dataset, we find that 41 percent of students…

Advocates uniformity in college applications--a centralized application system in which candidates would supply the required academic, personal, and financial information and a rank-ordered listing of their target universities or colleges. Target colleges would segmentially evaluate the applicant as a first-choice candidate until the applicant was…

Describes a procedure to empower college applicants to choose colleges realistically and avoid rejection. Suggests use of a scattergram model of admissions reality, relating Scholastic Aptitude Test Scores and Grade Point Averages to courses taken or omitted, extracurricular achievements, and other factors. (KS)