Low-income students are underrepresented at selective colleges. Most evaluative criteria used by admissions officers are correlated with income, including test scores and performance in high school. Inspired in part by the current state of the use of testing in college admissions, this study examines how the quality of colleges attended by…

Contextual admissions schemes are commonly used across the United Kingdom (UK) for admission into higher education (HE) institutions. These schemes consider an applicant's background and circumstances alongside academic achievement to provide a fairer evaluation of progression into university. Several contextual factors have been considered by HE…

Letters of recommendation from school counselors are required to apply to many selective colleges and universities. Still, relatively little is known about how this non-standardized component may affect equity in admissions. We use cutting-edge natural language processing techniques to algorithmically analyze a national dataset of over 600,000…

This report looks at trends since 1997, uniquely combining several data sources to give the most comprehensive view available on how patterns in access to higher education have changed in the years between 1997 and 2022. A major study of higher education trends over the past 25 years reveals persistent access gaps for disadvantaged students,…

Profiles describing a high school's quality and composition are one component of the undergraduate admission application to selective colleges, offering admission officers insight into a student's academic environment. This study explores alignment between the data admission officers seek in a profile to support their holistic evaluations and the…

This study illuminates how common holistic admissions practices at so-called "elite" colleges and universities favor high-SES, high wealth applicants through the ways they define and consider "exceptional" performance in extracurricular activities. While many studies have established advantages to high-income applicants based…

This study examines a diverse set of nearly 100 private institutions that adopted test-optional undergraduate admissions policies between 2005-2006 and 2015-2016. Using comparative interrupted time series analysis and difference-in-differences with matching, I find that test-optional policies were associated with a 3% to 4% increase in Pell Grant…

Highly selective higher education institutions (HEIs) are simultaneously mandated to enable access for populations which have traditionally been excluded ('equality'), and to ensure that admitted students have the potential to succeed in higher education ('excellence'). This article uses original empirical case study data from 2018, from nine…

Admission to highly selective institutions offers a pathway to upward social mobility, particularly for low-resource students. However, entrenched wealth disparities in the United States present serious challenges for admission officers at highly selective institutions. Utilizing individualized holistic review (IHR), including letters of…

Purpose: This study focuses on courses that prepare applicants for universities' highly competitive entrance examinations in Finland. The analysis clarifies the market-making practices and the construction of this field. Design/Approach/Methods: To understand these processes, we use Caliskan and Callon's five framings for studying marketization as…

There are increasing calls for the UCAS personal statement to be reformed. These calls are based on the claim that the current personal statement gives unfair advantages to more privileged applicants within higher education admissions. While this topic has attracted political attention, there is much about the personal statement that remains…

This article uses philosophical analysis to clarify the arguments and claims about racial discrimination brought forward in the recent legal challenges to affirmative action in higher education admissions. Affirmative action opponents have argued that elite institutions of higher education are using negative action against Asian American…

Decisions about whether and where to go to college can make a difference in students' later success. However, many students from low-income families--"undermatch"--they do not enroll at all or do not enroll in the most selective college they likely could attend. This study investigated whether promising advising strategies, bundled…

The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) 2020 Trustee Index is the third annual survey of governing board members regarding matters imperative to the higher education sector, as well as to the colleges, universities, and multicampus systems they hold in trust. This AGB survey, conducted in collaboration with Gallup,…

Previous research suggested that candidates from some black and minority ethnic groups were less likely to receive an offer of a place from an "old" university. These findings were disputed in a re-analysis carried out for HEFCE which found that only Pakistani candidates were significantly less likely to receive offers (from both…