Within the past decade, there has been a growing number of studies examining undermatch--when students apply to or enroll in institutions less selective than their academic qualifications permit. To estimate undermatch, researchers must define institutions' selectivity levels and determine which students are eligible to gain admission to these…

International students enrich the campus culture and help domestic students to grow cross-cultural competencies, and international students have also contributed a lot to the revenue of both the hosting institutions and the U.S. economy. Regretfully, there has been a dearth of studies on international students, particularly in the areas of…

Research on college choice decisions of high school students has increased over the past forty years but has generally centered on demographic characteristics such as race, gender, or socio-economic status of students. There has been little research on the influences on the college choice decisions of high academically achieving students from…

This study examines the association between college-bound friends and college enrollment using restricted transcript data from the High School Longitudinal Study. Propensity score matching and school fixed effects models suggest that having close college-bound friends is positively associated with enrolling in college. However, Black and Latino…

Little is known about the school choice practices of Aboriginal families in settler-colonial societies, where they have been removed from their ancestral lands and/or have been subjected to discriminatory educational policies. Through the lens of settler-colonial theory, this study elucidates the "spatially positioned" school choice…

Black students are often tasked with negotiating racial microaggressions--subtle, racialized offenses--at historically White colleges and universities. Higher education scholarship has found that when Black students speak up in response to racial microaggressions, they tend to feel overburdened with having to educate the offending party. This…

This study examines how a specific form of parental support--parental validation--is related to students' college experiences and institutional commitment. Results based on a survey of first-generation and low-income students indicated that parental validation is related to students' social and academic engagement, sense of belonging, and…

Targets set by the UK Office for Students require highly academically selective UK universities to enrol a greater percentage of students identified as least likely to participate in higher education. Such students are typically at a disadvantage in terms of levels of academic preparedness and economic, cultural and social capital. Drawing on…

Graduate-level professional health care programs have a highly selective admissions process. Applicants can distinguish themselves by participating in High Impact Practices (HIPs) to enhance their undergraduate experience and academic and professional success. The variables analyzed in this study included acceptance, grade point average (GPA),…

Despite limiting access to applicants from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, the practice of using hard or soft Graduate Record Examination (GRE) cutoff scores in physics graduate program admissions is still a popular method for reducing the pool of applicants. The present study considers whether the undergraduate institutions of…

Building a strong, diverse teacher workforce in sufficient numbers requires understanding of the points along the pathway into the teaching profession where aspiring teachers are most likely lost. Currently, policymakers, state education agencies, and teacher prep programs have limited insight into the obstacles along this pathway, largely due to…

Students and families in Chicago are increasingly taking up school choice options offered by the school district. Prospective high school students and their families have 160 high schools to choose from. These options include a broad variety of schools in governance, size, academic approach, and programs offered. To streamline the school…

The Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on the legality of racial preferences, in part thanks to a lawsuit against Harvard College alleging that the school discriminates against Asian-Americans. Proving discrimination at a specific school is an arduous task, requiring access to private, detailed admissions records--as the legal documents in that…

As scholars of higher education regularly point out, American universities face a fundamental tension between access and exclusion. On the one hand, as publicly supported institutions operating in a democracy, they are charged with promoting social mobility and sharing knowledge that can improve society. On the other, they are tasked with…

The main goal of this study is to determine the extent to which academically successful students studying in secondary schools in Turkey that only accept students scoring in extremely high (94th-99th) percentile on standardized tests harbor intentions to emigrate from Turkey in the future. In addition, a secondary goal is to examine why they…