In Chile many university students do not persist to graduation. Some students dropped out in the first year, others later. The objective of this study, based on students admitted to but not graduating from selective universities, was to identify factors associated with their academic success and length of persistence before withdrawal. The 707…

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…

Social engagement of transfer students is of importance to their completion of university studies and thus to understanding whether community colleges could serve as an equalizer in higher education. One overlooked aspect is the social engagement of transfer students with native students, which is arguably contingent on a sense of legitimacy of…

This paper explores how fairness was conceptualised by those responsible for admission to highly selective undergraduate courses at 17 universities in England. Fairness was conceptualised principally with reference to the traditional "meritocratic equality of opportunity" paradigm, which holds that university places should go to the most…

Existing studies have found that the starting point for class divisions is the family: while schools play a interrupting role, it is passive compared to the roles of the family and children themselves. It is therefore taken for granted when rural students are screened out by school education or fail to test into good universities. If the…

Evaluating the impact of widening participation interventions can be challenging. This article discusses some of the difficulties in "attributing" change to complex widening participation interventions and suggests that the Theory of Change (ToC) approach can address some of these challenges by evidencing the "contribution"…

Increasing transfer success of community college students has the potential to improve preparedness of America's workforce. Yet little is known about the types of institutions to which students transfer from community colleges. This is the executive summary of the report, "Persistence: The Success of Students Who Transfer From Community…

Studies in relation to working-class students at elite universities document on the one hand the role of 'mundane reflexivity' in dealing with class domination while on the other indicate a new form of domination and disadvantages working on these working-class 'exceptions' -- they may achieve academically at university but experience various…

Nearly half of all postsecondary students today begin their college journey at a two-year institution (49.2 percent). Students enrolled at a community college are more likely to come from lower-income families than those at four-year institutions. Indeed, low-income students are three times as likely to start at a community college as high-income…

Gender inequality in education has been well documented in the literature, in light of family and school socialization. We build on this literature and focus from a micro sociological perspective on the emergence of 'critical reflexivity' in the specific case of a group of university scholarship students in Lebanon. Through observations and…

In 2011, the Sutton Trust published "Degrees of Success," which looked at university acceptance rates and how they differ by school type and area, finding state school pupils were considerably less likely to go to top universities than independent or grammar school pupils. "Access to Advantage" returns to the issues raised in…

During the last 10 years, a group of selective universities in Chile has started to implement admissions programs that consider the achievement of students in the context of the educational opportunities they have had, thus reducing reliance on the national college entrance exam. This study explores the program theories in a sample of these…

A questionnaire was administered to 1,929 applicants to Oxford University, including measures of trait anxiety, behavioural response to examinations and to breakdown in relationships. 635 of these applicants were admitted to the university and of these, 383 also responded to a questionnaire administered 4 years later, just before their final…

Active involvement in college activities is linked to a host of student development outcomes, including personal growth, achievement and satisfaction. Yet, to date there has been too little attention to how social class shapes campus involvement. Through an analysis of survey data of students attending a single elite university and a national…

We argue that once we take into account the students' rational enrollment decisions, mismatch in the sense that the intended beneficiary of affirmative action admission policies are made worse off could occur only if selective universities possess private information about students' post-enrollment treatment effects. This necessary condition for…