University entrance criteria can be a contentious topic, particularly in respect of equity. In this paper we discuss studies which demonstrate that revisions of entrance criteria which are designed with no explicit reference to equity issues can have a surprisingly positive impact on the fractions of disadvantaged subgroups admitted. We…

Background: The importance of increasing the number of US college students completing degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) has prompted calls for research to provide a better understanding of factors related to student participation in these majors, including the impact of a student's high-school mathematics…

Medical schools employ a variety of preadmission measures to select students most likely to succeed in the program. The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and the undergraduate college grade point average (uGPA) are two academic measures typically used to select students in medical school. The assumption that presently used preadmission…

This article discusses new evidence on the effectiveness of dual enrollment in increasing college achievement in New York City (NYC). After reviewing existing research on the effectiveness of dual enrollment programs, the authors discuss the results of a recent evaluation of College Now, the dual enrollment program of The City University of New…

This paper uses a relatively large dataset of the stated academic major preferences of economics majors at a relatively large, not highly selective, public university in the USA to identify the "discouraged-business-majors" (DBMs). The DBM hypothesis addresses the phenomenon where students who are screened out of the business curriculum often…

Incoming first-year college students (N = 4,292) were surveyed regarding attitudes and beliefs about leadership. Students' opinions about their leadership ability were high and were related to having an outgoing personality, as well as the number of high school activities in which they had been involved. In addition, students' understanding of…

In this study the effects of learning approaches, locus of control (LOC), socio-economic status and self-efficacy on undergraduate students in North Cyprus was investigated. Four questionnaires were administered on 99 students in order to collect data regarding the learning approaches, LOC, self-efficacy and demographic factors. High cumulative…

Volusia County (Florida) Schools' Career and Technical Education (CTE) program has a high school graduation rate of 95 percent. That beats the districtwide rate of 78 percent. That's not all: The 4,500 students enrolled in 33 different career programs at 10 high schools have higher grade point averages in general and do better in Advanced…

This study examined the relationship of academic self-efficacy to engagement in class discussion and performance on major course exams among students (N = 165) in an undergraduate human development course. Cluster analysis was used to identify three levels of academic self-efficacy: high (n = 34), medium (n = 91), and low (n = 40). Results…

The purpose of this study was to: examine differences in students' perceptions of their noncognitive skills and school environments by race/ethnicity, and explore whether students' perceptions of their noncognitive skills and school environments were related to three outcomes that have been identified in the research as mattering most for a…

This article presents a method for addressing the self-selection bias of students who participate in learning communities (LCs). More specifically, this research utilizes equivalent comparison groups based on selected incoming characteristics of students, known as bootstraps, to account for self-selection bias. To address the differences in…

Learning analytics has been as used a tool to improve the learning process mainly at the micro-level (courses and activities). However, another of the key promises of learning analytics research is to create tools that could help educational institutions at the meso- and macro-level to gain better insight into the inner workings of their programs…

This study questions whether the contradictory results from previous studies of gender and performance in accounting is because gender has no mutually homogeneous groups. A combination of gender and personality types will provide a more balanced picture of academic performance in accounting. There are three main findings in this study: the…

Primary literature is essential for scientific communication and is commonly utilized in undergraduate biology education. Despite this, there is often little time spent "training" our students how to critically analyze a paper. To address this, we introduced a primary literature module in multiple upper-division laboratory courses. In…

The mentor's background in educational roles has been presented as a moderator of School-Based Mentoring (SBM). However, the analysis of overlapping mentoring and teaching roles has been underemphasized in the literature. The aim of this study is to test whether the combination of mentoring and teaching roles influences the mentees' school…