Understanding students' college enrollment decisions is critical because the admission outcome can affect the school's quality and its reputation. In this paper, we study how students consider their relative academic ability compared to their potential peers. Drawing from social comparison theory, we posit that there are asymmetric effects due to…

Despite college rankings' popular yet controversial nature, there is little known about the relationship between college rankings and students. Prior literature suggests that students who make use of rankings are more privileged, yet there lacks a comprehensive analysis surrounding the types of students who place importance on rankings in more…

Sino-foreign cooperative universities (SFCU) represent the advanced manifestation of transnational education in China and has profoundly shaped the country's higher education landscape. Despite the tremendous development of SFCUs, there is limited research on the motivations and driving factors of students choosing to study at SFCUs. To bridge…

The purpose of this paper is to show what are the applicants' institution selection criteria in higher education in Hungary and what changes this will imply in higher education management and communication. These questions were investigated based on a review of the most relevant literature and the analysis of 1396 Hungarian higher education…

When choosing a college, high school students and those who guide them through the process must consider the complex interactions between student-level and institution-level variables in order to achieve an optimal person-environment fit. Ten academically advanced high school students who had chosen and committed to attending a college…

Hundreds of colleges have changed their names to signal higher quality. We estimate how this affects college choice and the labor market performance of college graduates. Administrative data show that name-changing colleges enroll higher-aptitude students, with larger effects for attractive-but-misleading name changes and among students with less…

Purpose: This study empirically investigates the influence of students' brand attitudes and perceptions of brand fit on their study intention vis-à-vis international brand alliances and individual brands after alliance. Design/methodology/approach: Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used in data analysis, and a questionnaire was administered…

Most low-income, high-achieving students in the United States neither attend nor apply to selective universities despite research that shows that they are just as likely as their high-income peers to succeed if they do apply to those schools. Despite the fact that many universities have begun offering substantial financial aid packages that would…

Less-advantaged students are under-represented at prestigious universities, but can we infer that they actively avoid them? This research measured university applicants' knowledge of 115 UK universities. Using card-sort tasks within an interview format, 56 Year 13 students from different types of 16-19 education described how they chose five…

National College Access Network (NCAN) has heard, repeatedly and consistently, over the years that one of the best aspects of NCAN membership is the ability to collaborate with and learn from other members. In an effort to further the transfer of ideas, NCAN, in the summer of 2016, hosted a series of four Idea Incubators across the country. These…

This paper offers the first comprehensive analysis of the effect of changes in university rankings on applicant and institution behaviour in the UK. When their rank worsens, universities are found to experience small but statistically significant reductions in the number of applications received as well as in the average tariff score of applicants…

The relevance of studying the stated problem is due to the fact that for increasing the efficiency of higher education marketing it is necessary to take into account several factors, namely, factors that impact the choice of a university and an academic program by enrollees, as well as socio-psychological characteristics of the latter, while…

This paper estimates the effect that the league table published in the Sunday Times University Guide has on perceptions of the quality of universities by head teachers and academics, and on Home, EU and Overseas student applications, using data from 2005 to 2009 and a System GMM model for dynamic panel data. Our main result is that university…

College ranking guides such as Barron's "Profiles of American Colleges" and "US News and World Report" serve as bibles for college applicants and their families. The schools they proclaim as most competitive or elite receive a flood of applications, despite their often-hefty price tags. However, the ranks of the top-tier…

This paper analyzes how high-ability students respond to different indicators of university quality when applying for a university. Are prospective students influenced by quality indicators of a university ranking or by an excellence status awarded within a nationwide competition? And if so, are some quality dimensions, e.g. research reputation,…