While Black students have experienced significant growth in college enrollment since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Higher Education Act of 1965, they are still less likely than their white counterparts to attend and graduate from a post-secondary institution (Ryan & Bauman, 2016). There have been previous studies on college…

College admissions in the U.S. is decentralized, with students applying separately to each school. This creates frictions in the college admissions process and, if substantial, might ultimately limit student choice. In this paper, we study the introduction of the Common Application (CA) platform, under which students submit a single application to…

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…

Background/Context: Policies featuring individualized learning plans (ILPs) have become increasingly popular among states seeking to improve college and career readiness through early postsecondary planning. Although ILPs are featured in legislation for more than 35 states, limited work has been done on measuring their effectiveness to ensure that…

Less privileged students disproportionately aim low with their university applications and often fail to apply to the institutions that match their academic qualifications. Little attention, however, has been directed toward the converse phenomenon, that of aiming high. These kinds of applications are commonly called 'reaches,' meaning an…

Each month, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) surveys a random sample of individuals who three months prior registered on mba.com--the GMAC™ website for prospective graduate business students. Their survey responses provide an inside look into the decision-making process of people currently considering applying to a graduate…

Each month, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) surveys a random sample of individuals who three months prior registered on mba.com--the GMAC™ website for prospective graduate business students. Their survey responses provide an inside look into the decision-making process of people currently considering applying to a graduate…

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…

Using a dataset that matched applicants to graduate programs at a regional university who were admitted but chose not to attend to a section of students who did choose to attend, this research investigates the factors involved in students selecting a graduate program. The distance to a university was not a factor in the student's decision, even…

Each month, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) surveys a random sample of individuals who three months prior registered on mba.com--the GMAC™ website for prospective graduate business students. Their survey responses provide an inside look into the decision-making process of people currently considering applying to a graduate…

The enrollment decision-making process of a master of business administration (MBA) applicant contains multiple factors. Social influences from group memberships, marketing ads, and socioeconomic status carry varying amount of influence on the individual's choice for an MBA program. It is unknown what impact informal leaders, interpersonal…

For students who decide to enroll in college after high school graduation, there are numerous factors to consider when searching for potential matches and choosing from the available options. Ten recent high school graduates who participated in self-selected, ability-grouped, advanced academic courses in high school were interviewed at the end of…

Parents have the ability to influence the educational achievements of their children who are in college by implementing strategies and techniques that will support them. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore the parental involvement of Filipino-American parents who were instrumental in helping their children complete their…

This study explores why African American first-year students admitted to the University of California Davis decline their offer of admissions. The objective is to help the University successfully achieve their goal of supporting greater diversity and representation of students from historically underrepresented minority communities and…