This paper investigates the role played by self-confidence in college applications. Using incentivized experiments, we measure the self-confidence of more than 2,000 students applying to colleges in France. The best female students and students from low socioeconomic status (low-SES) significantly underestimate their rank in the grade distribution…

Drawing on the survey data from 259 students enrolled at American universities, the study explores how recent tensions between China and the U.S. and issues of public safety would affect Chinese students' perceptions and aspirations for American education. The findings of the research identify significant correlations between the effects of U.S.…

Asian Americans are generally perceived to be disproportionately enrolled in four-year postsecondary education institutions despite evidence of Asian Americans being concentrated at both two-year and four-year postsecondary education institutions. This perception of Asian Americans has contributed to limited attention to Asian Americans'…

We examine relationships between motivations towards higher education choices, gender and beliefs about the financial consequences of these choices. We control for home background, school type and students' expectations of grades they will achieve at age 16. We use a unique individual-level UK data set from a random sample of schools with a…

This article investigates students' post-secondary education transition processes in Cameroon through the lens of agency. Situated in a country where the higher education participation rate is fairly low, our article explores how students agentically negotiate access to higher education within structural constraints of socio-economic status and…

This study considers whether participation in several out-of-class high school experiences increased the odds that a student would aspire to earn a bachelor's degree, whether these relationships were moderated by the student's race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status, and whether these experiences, considered together, had a cumulative influence on…

Since the restoration of the "Gaokao" (College Entrance Examination) in 1977 and the nationwide higher education expansion that started in 1998, millions of rural students have enrolled in urban universities. Though Chinese rural students' educational trajectories have received extensive attention, their subjective experiences in the…

P-12 (pre-school -- grade 12) international schools educate increasing numbers of local and expatriate students, who make up a growing proportion of tertiary (university level) international students. Using the transnational social fields framework, this phenomenological study focused on the experiences of 19 students from international schools in…

Reading motivation may help explain some discrepancies in higher education attainment among Latinx adolescents. Using a person-centered approach to understand underlying reading motivation profiles among N = 254 Latinx adolescents, results identified four ordered classes of reading motivation including, (a) a "High" class characterized…

The quest for global ranking has motivated higher education institutions (HEIs) in Vietnam to increase the number of international students in their enrolments. However, little is known about experiences of current international students in Vietnamese HEIs. This article offers a mosaic of international student experiences (ISE) in a…

This study investigated factors that are likely to influence students' educational expectations in the State of Qatar, concentrating on selected parental factors. Drawing on recent work in the field, the study examined the intersection of student demographic and socio-economic attributes along with contextual factors, on student educational…

In recent years, the number of new asylum applications in Germany has risen with a peak in 2015. Many refugees arrive with high levels of prior education and corresponding educational aspirations. Hence, German universities and preparatory colleges (so-called 'Studienkollegs') have created additional preparatory courses and supporting services for…

Despite roughly 21.2 million veterans living in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012), only 2 million service members and their families were eligible for benefits under the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008 (American Council on Education [ACE], 2008). Furthermore, less than 1 million beneficiaries received education…

It is argued that free-tuition higher education increases opportunity for underrepresented students with positive equity implications. Moreover, access to higher education for free expands existing visions of equal opportunity, as it changes aspirations and behavior. In 2015, Tennessee became the first state in the nation to implement a universal…

Indigenous students remain vastly under-represented within higher education in Australia. While aspirations have been a key focus of the widening participation agenda, the aspirations of Indigenous students have largely been overlooked. Drawing on survey data collected as part of a mixed methods longitudinal study conducted with students in Years…