Discusses the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and its importance to colleges in admissions decisions. The author describes the admissions process, the role of test scores, and the relationships of class ranks and SAT scores to outcomes in college. (CT)

Currently, students from low-income backgrounds are underrepresented at selective colleges and universities in the U.S. With the introduction of many programs aimed at increasing the numbers of these students at selective institutions, it is important to understand how the characteristics of an institution can affect educational outcomes. Using…

What are students doing with their time? Existing research mostly has focused on time used for study and/or work in relation to academic outcomes. This study uses a diary approach to explore business and marketing students' time use encompassing all student activities, not just study or work. A clustering procedure resulted in two meaningful…

Performance was examined for five cohorts of 1998-2002 Texas public high school graduates through their first year and 1998-2001 cohorts through their fourth year of Texas public higher education. Student performance on college outcomes included (a) first- and fourth-year grade point averages (GPAs), (b) first- and fourth-year credit hours earned,…

Researchers who compared Nebraska high school curricula between 1953 and 1983 have developed a model readily adaptable to individual districts desiring a more informed basis for decision making. (Author)

In Florida, the Learn & Serve America program has fostered evolutionary, perhaps revolutionary, changes in teaching and learning. Data from 1995-96 Florida Learn & Serve grantees mirror the positive results of the previous academic year. By heavy majorities (62% to 82%), participating students showed improvements in attendance, conduct,…

Transcripts and a survey from college prep graduates of public high schools showed 46% did not graduate with academically competitive credentials. Of these students, 51% completed three years of math, 62% went no higher than biology, average Scholastic Aptitude Test scores were 754. They were more likely to attend community or technical college,…

Examined career academy student outcomes for 18 cohorts of entering students enrolled in 8 urban schools nationwide, analyzing attendance, grades, and graduation status. Compared to what would have been expected of the same students in the same schools' general academic programs, career academy students had higher first-year grade point averages,…

The study compares two groups of students who graduated from high school in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) during 1997-2001. Students who had participated in MPS Montessori programs from preschool through 5th grade were matched to a comparison group on the basis of gender, SES, race/ethnicity, and high school attended. Data from the ACT and…

Using multilevel modeling to analyze survey data from 1,532 alumni from a large research university, this study proposes to examine the impact that departments have on student satisfaction. Controlling for individual characteristics, researchers found that characteristics of departments such as size, faculty contact with students, research…

The experience of community college transfer students at four-year institutions has been well documented by studies characterizing their adjustment process as "transfer shock." A popular paradigm, the transfer shock concept only describes the cognitive outcome of students' academic adjustment as measured by GPA. Numerous researchers have utilized…

Over the past decade, state legislatures have experienced increasing pressure to hold higher education accountable for student learning. This pressure stems from several sources, such as increasing costs and decreasing graduation rates. To explore the feasibility of one approach to measuring student learning that emphasizes program improvement, we…

This report summarizes the following results from Austin Independent School District's student graduating class of 2006: student demographic information, results from their High School Exit Survey responses, their postsecondary enrollment data, and students' academic performance data.

The policy on incomplete grades at California's College of the Canyons states that incompletes may only be given under circumstances beyond students' control and that students must make arrangements with faculty prior to the end of the semester to clear the incomplete. Failure to complete an incomplete may result in an "F" grade. While…

This study focused on survey response, which was defined simply as the completion of a survey. It examined connections between survey response and college student characteristics. It also investigated whether survey response predicted educational outcomes, including retention. The study focused on a cohort of first-year students at a mid-size,…