The Texas Ten Percent Plan (TTP) provides students in the top 10 percent of their high-school class with automatic admission to any public university in the state, including the two flagship schools, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M. Texas created the policy in 1997 after a federal appellate court ruled that the state's previous…

This paper studies a natural experiment due to an unusual change in the college admission policy at a Chinese university, which brought a large number of low-score students into several academic departments in the university. Exploiting large variations in peer characteristics and strong interactions among peer groups, the analysis finds that…

In the absence of extensive data on doctoral institution choice, assumptions by faculty and administrators flourish. Due to increasing calls for diversity, continuing economic hardship, and decreasing yield rates, especially for underrepresented minorities, a highly selective research university (very high research activity) administered two sets…

This Research Brief describes the results of an exploratory study of the development and potential uses of a set of college readiness measures for Maine high schools. The study was designed to: (1) explore the viability of creating a series of school-level college readiness indices; (2) examine the relationships between the indices and other…

The creation of racially diverse colleges at all levels of selectivity has proven to be no small task, even with the legal use of race-conscious affirmative action. As evidenced in the postsecondary destinations of the high school class of 2004, very selective schools (those with Barron's Selectivity rankings of 1, 2 or 3) have many more White,…

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209--a ban on the consideration of race in the college admissions process at public universities. This policy brief examines the effects of Proposition 209 at the University of California system by analyzing twenty years' of application, admission, and enrollment data. The brief concludes that in…

Empirical studies and conceptual frameworks presented in the extant literature offer a static imagining of academic failure. Time-to-event analysis, which captures the dynamism of individual factors, as when they determine the failure to properly tailor timely strategies, impose longitudinal studies which are still lacking within the field. The…

In the English-speaking Caribbean, the Advanced level qualification is the traditional and preferred route to accessing an education at the University of the West Indies (UWI). However, applicants with nontraditional qualifications--such as the associate degree qualification, teacher certificate, diploma, and mature student status (meaning one who…

Two qualitative research projects examined the impact of university study on two cohorts of mature-age students at a regional university in Australia. All the students interviewed had entered university via non-traditional pathways and had faced significant hurdles in gaining university entrance and continuing with their studies. The influence of…

Equity in higher education is mostly related to the context in which it is discussed. Most commonly, equity is sought for enhancing access to higher education for under-represented groups such as minorities, low income groups, or any other type of disadvantaged group of people. The plethora of research in this area mostly focuses on different…

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.…

This study examined the effects of providing low-income, high-achieving high school seniors with college application guidance and information about the costs of college. The "application guidance" included information about deadlines and requirements for college applications at nearby institutions, at the state's flagship institution,…

This study describes the college choice experiences of high school students eligible for the Pittsburgh Promise, a place-based merit-aid scholarship. The Pittsburgh Promise provides scholarships of up to $10,000 to eligible students graduating from Pittsburgh public and charter schools who enroll at postsecondary institutions within the…

The paper proposes a model of educational strategies for college entrants that makes it possible to assess the investment efficiency in additional preparation as evidenced by the Unified State Exam [USE] scores. It was found that college entrants still use traditional forms of preparation despite the new institutional admission conditions at…

American higher education is facing several significant challenges: rapidly rising tuitions, a lack of support from politicians and the public in general, a demand for higher graduation rates, and the lack of a clear articulation of mission. Coping with these issues and many others is a formidable task. No matter what possible solutions and…