To evaluate how Advanced Placement courses affect college-going, we randomly assigned the offer of enrollment into an AP science course to over 1,800 students in 23 schools that had not previously offered the course. We find no substantial AP course effects on students' plans to enroll in college or on their college entrance exam scores. Yet AP…

Focusing on a cohort of high school students from a Midwest metropolitan region, this study combines multiple sources of data and uses a multinomial logistic regression to model student postsecondary choices with respect to whether and where to attend college. Specifically, we examined the enrollment patterns by proximity to the home region and…

Although college enrollment rates have expanded over the last several decades, low-income students and students of color continue to face formidable barriers as they seek entry into higher education. While the existence of these barriers are often viewed as macro-level roadblocks that are largely systemic, much of the literature around access to…

We argue that place-based college scholarships, if designed intentionally and leveraged effectively, can foster local economic development. Since the introduction of the Kalamazoo Promise in 2005, a growing number of communities have applied the place-based approach to investments in human capital through the creation of college scholarship…

College decisions are often the result of a variety of influences related to student background characteristics, academic characteristics, college preferences and college aspirations. College counselors recommend that students choose a variety of schools, especially schools where the general student body matches the academic achievement of…

This qualitative case study explores the career and educational aspirations, college choice process, and college barriers and opportunities of 26 rural, African American high school students. Data included interviews with 26 students and 11 school staff members. Findings suggest that the students' rural context shapes aspirations. In addition,…

Two-year colleges have played an important role in providing postsecondary education for women in postwar Japan. More recently, a dwindling college-bound population in Japan has resulted in a drastic decrease in the number of and enrollment in 2-year colleges. This study explored the motivations and aspirations of 12 Japanese female students to…

This report builds on a foundation of knowledge about the academic readiness of the ACT-tested high school graduating class of 2012 as presented in "The Condition of College & Career Readiness" (see ED534761). An important conclusion of the "Condition" report is that far too many high school graduates are not prepared for…

This is the Executive Summary for the full report, "Complexity in College Admission: The Barriers between Aspiration and Enrollment for Lower-Income Students." In September 2007, the College Board formed the Task Force on Admissions in the 21st Century in response to a request from the Guidance and Admission Assembly Council (GAA…

In September 2007, the College Board formed the Task Force on Admissions in the 21st Century in response to a request from the Guidance and Admission Assembly Council (GAA Council) to more closely examine the high school-to-college transition process. Students and parents complained about the lack of transparency in the process, the confusing…

This dissertation sought to explore the choice-of-college decision of academically talented students using Chapman's (1981) Model of College Choice to inform the selection of variables. This study focused on what factors influenced the decision of students who earned an A/A+ average in high school to enroll in their first-choice institution of…

In 1976 and again in 1995, several brave women chose to enroll at--and thereby to "gender integrate"--America's military colleges. In 1976, women were admitted to the Department of Defense (DOD) service academies after an Act of Congress changed a law so as to allow for their matriculation. Beginning in 1995, women were admitted to state-supported…

Since 2004, the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) has tracked the postsecondary experiences of successive cohorts of graduating Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students and examined the relationship among high school preparation, support, college choice, and postsecondary outcomes. The goal of this research is to help CPS understand the…

Data from the 1993-94 ACT Assessment and a follow-up were examined to see how many black and white students eventually enrolled in what had been their first-choice colleges. Results for 12,448 blacks and 125,298 whites indicate that initial choices by blacks are more liable to change. (SLD)

This report describes the 1994 postsecondary education assistance patterns, job experiences, lifestyles, and values of the eighth grade class of 1988. The data from the report are from the 1994 Third Follow-up of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 which collected information on postsecondary education participation, employment,…