Following months of debate in 2012, Brazilian President Rousseff signed the Quota Law establishing quotas for the percentages of Black, Brown, and indigenous public secondary school students that public universities must enroll. Guided by a social dominance theory framework, this paper examines the extent to which such a policy can challenge an…

Undocumented immigrant students represent 2% of the total U.S. higher education population. Due to their citizenship status, many undocumented high school students encounter barriers to college access including prohibitive admissions policies, increased tuition rates, and funding restrictions. Some undocumented students experience anxiety,…

This paper examines the impacts of co-residence (admitting women to men's colleges and men to women's colleges) at the University of Oxford beginning in the 1970s. Co-residence increased the representation of women undergraduates at Oxford to near parity with men; the representation of women in academic positions rose but not as substantially as…

America's regional public universities provide the opportunity for upward social mobility, or the generational movement of wealth, education, employment status, social adjustment, democratic participation, and general well-being. A college degree is generally thought of as the ticket to social mobility for individuals, and collectively, higher…

Given the substantial lack of racial diversity within the U.S. legal profession, it is important to understand how to improve the representation of racially minoritized students at law schools. This study uses panel data from the 2010s to consider several types of factors that may shape the number and percentage of incoming law school students…

This dissertation addresses three separate questions in human capital and development economics. In the first chapter, I study how college admission concerns drive students' field choices in a field-specific college admission system. To study this question, I leverage a college admission policy reform in Ethiopia that sharply increased the…

This report explores college-bound students' awareness of the range of math courses available, how those students make decisions regarding high school math course enrollment, and the implications of those choices for college admissions. Its focus is on students who are historically underrepresented in higher education, particularly Black and…

Admission into a higher degree research program or confirmation of candidature into such a program of most universities often requires the applicant to submit a research proposal. This is a very important document which not only articulates the research topic and research question, but also explains the research design which outlines how the…

The "Moving on Up? What Groundbreaking Study Tells Us About Access, Success, and Mobility in Higher Ed" report by Stephen Burd seeks to raise awareness of the data published in a paper, "Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility." This paper was released at the same time that Donald Trump began…

When professor Johnny Eric Williams at Trinity College (CT) sent out a racially charged tweet in the wake of last year's shooting at a congressional baseball practice, it thrust the institution into the media spotlight over how it responded. The tweet was portrayed in some media outlets as a racial remark against white people in general, although…

The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) Statement on Counselor Competencies defines college counselors' responsibilities as including "collaborat[ing] with teachers, administrators, and other educators." The experiences of longtime college counselors, showcase many best practices for working with teachers to…

Students of color (SOC) face multiple barriers to being admitted and retained in social work doctoral programs. We describe these hurdles and propose approaches to circumvent them. Admission challenges include a lack of guidance, financial hurdles, underpreparedness, and racism directed at applicants. Retention challenges include a dearth of…

Studies often portray cultural capital as a constant source of advantage. Yet this perspective underemphasizes the importance of activating cultural capital as a prerequisite for elite families to accrue its benefits. Using ethnography and interviews with elite students and parents in two top-performing public high schools in Beijing, I find that…

Computerized adaptive tests (CATs) have received wider attention throughout the world in recent years mainly because they provide their users with higher precision in examinee ability estimation with less items by the help of the sound psychometric principals they are based on. The recent attention necessitates the need for platforms on which CATs…

Many U.S. higher educational institutions have suffered budget cuts. In many cases, this has matriculated down to the admissions offices, resulting in reduced recruitment and marketing budgets. With reduction in recruitment budgets and a decrease in student enrollments, combined with growing competition for students, institutions are looking…