This paper explores how fairness was conceptualised by those responsible for admission to highly selective undergraduate courses at 17 universities in England. Fairness was conceptualised principally with reference to the traditional "meritocratic equality of opportunity" paradigm, which holds that university places should go to the most…

2019 was a bit different from previous years for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) Research. Since they had six larger-scale research projects (of which several were calendared over the summer months), they did not want to overly burden their members with surveys. This resulted in four 60-Second…

The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) and the Character Collaborative worked together to develop a survey of secondary school counselors and college admission offices. Survey questions were designed to better understand the nature of any character development programs offered by secondary schools in the US, and to…

The January 2020 60-Second Survey was designed to serve two purposes: (1) to benchmark institutional-level use of enrollment management and strategic enrollment management (SEM) plans; and (2) gather individual interest in enrollment management research (Appendix A). The survey was open to all American Association of Collegiate Registrars and…

College admissions leaders increasingly desire to incorporate non-cognitive factors like grit into admissions decisions. Consequently, we examined the validity of the short grit scale (Grit-S) using data collected on undergraduates attending 38 colleges. Using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), we found that Grit-S does not possess adequate model…

Tina Falkner is the Director of the Office of Student Finance for Academic Support Resources (a large unit comprised of the Office of the Registrar, the Office of Student Finance, the Office of Classroom Management, One Stop Student Services, Continuity and Compliance, and an internal web development team) at the University of Minnesota. Prior to…

Although it is well established that college entrance exams have become a key factor for admission to selective institutions, less is known about the influence of test scores in relation to other academic factors in the evaluation of a student's application file. This study conducts a randomized-controlled trial to determine whether providing…

The Center City campus of Thomas Jefferson University (Jefferson) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is an academic medical center that enrolls 3,700 students all seeking degrees in a health science-related discipline; the Center City campus includes six colleges and an Institute for Emerging Health Professions. The Office of Admissions is tasked with…

Disparate student academic outcomes and program access is a problem at Master of Public Administration (MPA) programs in the Northeast United States The current admission committee members at the case university did not know institution leaders' rationale for eliminating the Graduate Records Examination (GRE) criterion. The decision to exclude the…

Despite pledges to increase student body diversity, low-income students and Black, Latinx, and Native American students remain grossly underrepresented at elite colleges. To date, most studies exploring stratification in college enrollment patterns have looked at this phenomenon from the student or organizational perspective--examining either…

College admission has always been a rewarding and at times, stressful, career path. For professionals new to the field, an increased competitiveness in college admission and advances in technology in the last decade or so have contributed to an even greater possibility of burnout early in the career. In this article, the author discusses important…

This mixed-methods study used open-response survey data, focus groups, and an experimental simulation to explore how 311 admissions officers defined and used concepts of holistic review in selective college admissions. We found that 3 distinct definitions of holistic review predominate in the field: whole file, whole person, and whole context. We…

Many universities and K-12 public school systems express a significant, formal commitment to the ideals of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Relative to the emphasis on DEI in America's educational institutions, however, there has been little research describing DEI trends and evaluating the efficacy of DEI bureaucracies. This three-chapter…

This study found that current selective admission practices continue to reflect traditional norms of leadership in which title and prestige of organization are most valued, in part driven by increasing external pressure for quantification which emphasizes higher positions in prestigious or familiar organizations because they are easier to…

This article examines how diversity is constructed in college recruiting, with a focus on the ways in which recruiters' interpretations of diversity are conceptualized, practiced, and (mis)aligned with those represented in institutional messaging in higher education. Through the lens of Discourse Theory, this study demonstrates how distinct…