From early June to late July 2012, the Graduate Management Admission Council[R] (GMAC[R]) conducted the "Application Trends Survey", its annual survey of business school admission professionals worldwide to assess how application volume at MBA and other graduate management programs compared with that from the same period in 2011. This…

Your name: F. Stanley Gogettum. Your job: Director of Admissions. Your institution: floundering University. Like all good admissions directors, you constantly ask yourself about your work and its effectiveness. Should you continue high school visits? Should you use Student Search Service, or maybe an unscreened (but perhaps cheaper)…

Using qualitative inquiry and professional socialization as a framework to draw meaning from the work experiences of graduate admissions professionals, this project examines individual beliefs and organizational behaviors as they relate to enrollment management.

The authors investigate the information content of two commonly used admission tests, namely the Graduate Management Admission Test and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The analysis extends prior research by investigating the incremental information content of individual components from one admission test conditional on the…

Social media are at the heart of the daily communications of adolescents. In many cases, however, adolescents are unaware of the consequences of the long-term availability of their online personal information. Given the rising prevalence of online background checks on potential partners, college applicants, and job candidates, online search…

This study examines the relationship between high school efforts at post-secondary preparation for college bound students and the expectations of college and university admissions personnel. The Advanced Placement (AP) teachers and administrators at a rural Northwest Florida high school were administered a quantitative survey in order to collect…

Over the past several years, the admissions officer has been confronted with a situation that does not fit into the scheme of his normal operations--namely, the admission of foreign students. Often, because it has not been in the order of things, he has delegated this "irksome" problem to some "lowly" assistant or to the interested professor who…

The U.S. college admission environment has changed enormously over the last three decades. What have those changes meant for the profession of college admission officers? In this paper, the authors will describe the enormous changes that have taken place in high schools, colleges, and the entrepreneurial admission sector. They will describe how…

Bob Uecker, the Milwaukee Brewers' quipping radio broadcaster, makes his brief and lackluster career as a major league catcher the subject of much of his humor. About catching the knuckleball, Uecker famously said, "I always thought the knuckleball was the easiest pitch to catch." Of course, there is an even better way to catch a knuckleball, and…

Undergraduate admissions in the United States is a multibillion dollar industry involving families, higher education institutions, journalists, testing companies, test preparation companies, private consultants, marketing firms, high school guidance counselors, high school teachers, coaches, financial advisors, and publicly funded programs.…

The increasing competition for the desired quantity and quality of college students, along with the rise of for-profit institutions, has amplified the scrutiny of behavior and ethics among college admissions professionals and has increased the need for meaningful ethical guidelines and codes of conduct. Many other areas of responsibility within…

The college-going rates of rural students lag behind those of more urban students, a gap likely due, in part, to rural students' lower educational aspirations. These lower aspirations appear to be tied to the dilemma that higher education presents for many rural students: whether to remain in their rural home, working in traditional trades and…

Many organizations use formal appraisals to measure employee performance. Augustana College's Office of Admissions introduced an appraisal process in 2006. Subsequently, staff expressed a number of concerns, ranging from confusion about the process to its link to compensation. Action research proved essential for understanding the problems; it…

Few professional processes are more personally intrusive than the college application. It demands information about your family, your finances, your interests, and your desires. For lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) applicants in their teenage years who may not be comfortable with their sexuality, admission officers need be sensitive…

At selective colleges and universities across the United States, admissions officers decide the fate of students seeking higher education. Historically, those decisions have been based on standardized test scores and high school academic performance. But that did not always yield the most diverse student body, so other attributes have been and…