One of the most critical functions on campus is enrollment management. As budgets become tighter and institutions rely more heavily on tuition, the competition to "make the class" intensifies. How can institutional research help inform strategic planning in such a market? This paper will discuss the way that institutional researchers can…

Using data from two Toronto student cohorts that entered high school five years apart, this study uses descriptive and multivariate techniques to examine short-term change in the predictors of four possible pathways after high school: confirming a place in university, confirming a place in college, applying but no admittance, or not applying at…

Students who attend different colleges in the U.S. end up with vastly different economic outcomes. We study the role of relative value-added across colleges within student choice sets in producing these outcome disparities. Linking high school, college, and earnings registries spanning the state of Texas, we identify relative college value-added…

This paper examines the potential negative consequences of the internationalisation of American higher education from the perspective of positional competition theory. This analysis suggests that internationalisation efforts undertaken by colleges and universities contribute to positional competition between students vying for admission, between…

This article examines U.S.-based MSW programs' admissions practices and policies toward applicants with criminal convictions. Despite national attention to mass incarceration and its impact on college admissions, there is a dearth of empirical investigation in this area. Through a national survey of MSW programs' admissions personnel (n = 146),…

In 2016, following a request from the Minister for Education and Training, the Higher Education Standards Panel (HESP, 'the Panel') delivered 14 recommendations to achieve greater transparency in the admissions information for higher education. This report presents the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency's (TEQSA's) summative…

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) conducts the annual Application Trends Survey (ATS) of business school admissions offices around the world to offer timely insights into the demand for graduate management education (GME). This survey benefits admissions, recruitment, and marketing professionals in understanding the candidate…

This dissertation presents a collection of three essays on the economics of higher education. Although these essays were conceived as independent research projects, they all concern higher education in Chile. For that reason, I begin in chapter 1 with a general overview of Chile's higher education system. I briefly describe the institutional…

Letters of recommendation consume a lot of time and thought as they are solicited, written, and read, and, while many high school and college admission officials say that work pays off by providing a university with valuable and sometimes unique information about prospective students, most everyone also agrees they could be more effective. Some…

Low-income students, even those with strong academic credentials, are unlikely to attend a highly selective college. With a field experiment, we test an intervention to increase enrollment of low-income students at the highly selective University of Michigan. We contact students (as well as their parents and principals) with an encouragement to…

U.S. colleges and universities have identified a recent surge in behavioral health issues among their student bodies. Social work educators and scholars have expressed concerns about student behavioral health issues, given their potential impact on their professional functioning. There is, however, relatively little empirical evidence of this…

Situated within scholarly research on tracking, within-school racial segregation, and student career aspirations, this qualitative study examines how three Black students in the mainstream program at a magnet high school in the Southeastern United States discussed their career aspirations. Results indicate that while each participant aspired to…

Compared with admissions test scores, why are high school grades better at predicting college graduation? We argue that success in college requires not only cognitive ability but also self-regulatory competencies that are better indexed by high school grades. In a national sample of 47,303 students who applied to college for the 2009/2010 academic…

In this study, we investigated the currently applied selective admission criteria and tools of the two-year research master's programs of both the Graduate Schools of Life Sciences and Natural Sciences of Utrecht University (the Netherlands). In addition, we evaluated their transparency to applicants. Both admissions staff members and applicants…

The purpose of this study was to determine if a culturally relevant and responsive intervention (i.e., the Hip Hop Learning Community) could develop a foster youth's cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005). The Hip Hop Learning Community intervention was developed using a Hip Hop Empowerment Model, combining Yosso's (2005) Community Cultural Wealth Model…