Admission Policies Research Articles

Ergodic Control of Bipartite Matching Queues with Class Change and Matching Failure

Motivated by transplant applications, we study a bipartite matching queue with multiclass customers and multitype resources. Customers may change their classes or abandon the system while waiting in queue, and they may decline the offered resource units which results in matching failure. We are interested in designing efficient instantaneous matching policies that allocate resources upon arrival to waiting customers. Our objective is bicriteria and formulated as a cost functional that linearly combines the long-run average expected reward due to successful matches and the long-run average expected cost from customer waiting and abandonment. We first develop a stability condition on the class change and abandonment rates, which requires at least one customer queue with abandonment and that any queue without abandonment have a class transition path to a queue with abandonment. Under this condition, we construct a simple linear program, referred to as the fluid control problem (FCP), which serves as a lower bound for the original stochastic control problem under any admissible policy. We then propose a randomized matching policy based on the solution of the FCP and show that the proposed policy is asymptotically optimal under both the long-run average and ergodic cost criteria. In addition, we apply our method to study two X matching models with two customer classes and two resource types to provide insights on how the class change and matching failure impact the optimal policies.

Perspectives of Stakeholders on the inclusion of Personality Assessment in the Admission Policies of Medical Colleges: A Qualitative Study

Background: Joining the health care force as a doctor is a dream that flourishes in the minds of majority of youngsters in Pakistan, making the admission process highly competitive. Currently, our admission criteria only caters the knowledge domain of the applicants while research argues that personality of the candidates should also be considered when selecting the cream of the nation for one of the most critical profession of medicine. Objective: The objective of this research was to investigate stakeholders’ perspectives on the incorporation of personality assessment as a component of the admission requirements for medical colleges in Pakistan. Methods: An exploratory qualitative study was conducted using a multi-center approach, where participants from three different stakeholder groups involved in medical college admissions in Pakistan (Governing body members, experienced academic staff, and medical scholars) were interviewed. The analysis method used was thematic analysis. Results: The stakeholders reached a consensus that the current admission criteria need to be revised, although opinions were varied regarding the inclusion of personality assessment in the admission process. The stakeholders identified conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, extraversion, and openness to experience as the key personality features to be evaluated for medical college admissions, in descending order of importance. Conclusion: This study highlighted the need to revise and expand the existing admission criteria, while also revealing a diversified feedback to the proposal of introducing personality appraisal as part of the medical college admission standards as they may pose significant obstacles.

SLAP: Segmented Reuse-Time-Label Based Admission Policy for Content Delivery Network Caching

‘‘Learned” admission policies have shown promise in improving Content Delivery Network (CDN) cache performance and lowering operational costs. Unfortunately, existing learned policies are optimized with a few fixed cache sizes while in reality, cache sizes often vary over time in an unpredictable manner. As a result, existing solutions cannot provide consistent benefits in production settings. We present SLAP , a learned CDN cache admission approach based on segmented object reuse time prediction. SLAP predicts an object’s reuse time range using the Long-Short-Term-Memory model and admits objects that will be reused (before eviction) given the current cache size. SLAP decouples model training from cache size, allowing it to adapt to arbitrary sizes. The key to our solution is a novel segmented labeling scheme that makes SLAP without requiring precise prediction on object reuse time. To further make SLAP a practical and efficient solution, we propose aggressive reusing of computation and training on sampled traces to optimize model training, and a specialized predictor architecture that overlaps prediction computation with miss object fetching to optimize model inference. Our experiments using production CDN traces show that SLAP achieves significantly lower write traffic (38%-59%), longer SSDs lifetime (104%-178%), a consistently higher hit rate (3.2%-11.7%), and requires no effort to adapt to changing cache sizes, outperforming existing policies.

The Inclusion Paradox: Why Inclusive Space Excludes Migrant Children, and Vice Versa

What characteristics of space predict exclusive policies? Intuitively, socioeconomically exclusive spaces – such as wealthy urban centers in China – would also be exclusive in welfare provision. Drawing from cross-district comparisons within a Chinese metropolis, we identify a counterintuitive pattern where the urban center had easier migrant school access policies than the urban fringe. This pattern has existed in both the 2010s and 2020s, surviving a major school admissions policy reform. We call this pattern the inclusion paradox. The inclusion paradox can be attributed to two causes: a compartmentalization of school access along urban district boundaries, and a tendency of fringe districts to carry more migrant population with less fiscal capacity. As a result of the inclusion paradox, migrant children were more likely excluded from school access precisely where they were more likely to live. The inclusion paradox implies that policy exclusion and spatial exclusion substitute each other, a pattern that brings migrant school access in China in conversation with unequal school access in other contexts.

Hamiltonian-Driven Adaptive Dynamic Programming With Efficient Experience Replay.

This article presents a novel efficient experience-replay-based adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) for the optimal control problem of a class of nonlinear dynamical systems within the Hamiltonian-driven framework. The quasi-Hamiltonian is presented for the policy evaluation problem with an admissible policy. With the quasi-Hamiltonian, a novel composite critic learning mechanism is developed to combine the instantaneous data with the historical data. In addition, the pseudo-Hamiltonian is defined to deal with the performance optimization problem. Based on the pseudo-Hamiltonian, the conventional Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation can be represented in a filtered form, which can be implemented online. Theoretical analysis is investigated in terms of the convergence of the adaptive critic design and the stability of the closed-loop systems, where parameter convergence can be achieved under a weakened excitation condition. Simulation studies are investigated to verify the efficacy of the presented design scheme.

Under The Law: Recent developments in the quest for racial diversity in K-12 schools

In June 2023, the Supreme Court held that the admissions systems at the University of North Carolina (UNC) and Harvard University were racially discriminatory, effectively ending affirmative action. Are race-neutral admissions policies at selective K-12 schools next? Bob Kim considers two circuit court cases — Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board and Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence v. City of Boston — in which plaintiffs alleged that schools’ race-neutral admissions policies were discriminatory against Asian American students. In both cases, courts found that the cases were not discriminatory. Although how the Supreme Court might rule if it hears these cases is unclear, the bar for finding policies discriminatory is high, requiring not only a desire to increase diversity but also an intent to harm a particular racial group.

The disparate impacts of college admissions policies on Asian American applicants

There is debate over whether Asian American students face additional barriers, relative to white students, when applying to selective colleges. Here we present the results from analyzing 685,709 applications submitted over five application cycles to 11 highly selective colleges (the “Ivy-11”). We estimate that Asian American applicants had 28% lower odds of ultimately attending an Ivy-11 school than white applicants with similar academic and extracurricular qualifications. The gap was particularly pronounced for students of South Asian descent (49% lower odds). Given the high yield rates and competitive financial aid policies of the schools we consider, the disparity in attendance rates is likely driven, at least in part, by admissions decisions. In particular, we offer evidence that this pattern stems from two factors. First, many selective colleges give preference to the children of alumni in admissions. We find that white applicants were substantially more likely to have such legacy status than Asian applicants. Second, we identify geographic disparities potentially reflective of admissions policies that disadvantage students from certain regions of the United States. We hope these results inform discussions on equity in higher education.

Evaluating outcomes following adolescent and youth mental health inpatient admissions: A systematic review.

Increasing rates of mental illness among young people, exacerbated by the negative impacts of COVID-19, has resulted in growing pressure on available psychiatric resources to meet increasing demand. Inpatient units provide specialist care for young people with the most severe and complex mental disorders but are one of the most expensive models of psychiatric care. The aim of this review is to provide an update on the effectiveness of adolescent and youth mental health inpatient units in improving outcomes to inform the most efficacious use of psychiatric resources. Systematic searches of PubMed, The Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, EMBASE, and Web of Science were conducted for studies published in English between January 2011 to May 2022. Criteria for selection included participants aged 12-25 years who had been admitted to amental health inpatient unit. Studies were excluded if set in substance abuse or disability specific units, outpatient or forensic settings, or assessed novel interventions. 23 studies were identified as meeting inclusion criteria, with most (n = 19) utilizing a pre-post observational design and reporting improvement across various domains following inpatient treatment. A total of 24 different outcome measures or methods were used meaning a meta-analysis of results was not possible. There was also a lack of consistency across models of care, lengths of stay, admission policies, and interventions provided. Inpatient units provide positive outcomes for consumers however a clear understanding of clinical significance and comparison to other treatment settings is lacking.

Factors associated with academic performance among medical students at a medical school in South Korea: A retrospective cohort study.

Longitudinal research has provided systematic empirical data on the short- and long-term outcomes of admissions policies, curricular innovations, and complex decisions on students' academic progress. This study aimed to investigate the academic performance of medical students and related factors using cohort database collected from a medical school. The study participants included 134 medical students who graduated from Chonnam National University Medical School in 2022. The medical school's cohort database was used to collect data on demographics, admission, academic performance, extracurricular activities, and performance on the National Korean Medical Licensing Examination (KMLE). Participating in club activities had a significant association with medical students' academic advancement delay or leave of absence during the entire course of medical school (P = 0.007). Logistic regression analysis indicated that the nationwide clinical knowledge mock examination during the fourth year of medical school was significantly associated with passing the KMLE (adjusted odds ratio 1.12, 95% confidence interval 1.02-1.22; P = 0.014). Extracurricular school activities (a non-cognitive student attribute) and a wide range of cognitive student attributes captured from the cohort database were associated with medical students' academic performance. In conclusion, this study can reinforce a strong emphasis on the inclusion of cognitive and non-cognitive information in medical school curricula and assessments in order to improve medical education programs and future postgraduate performance.

Disparities in pre-health advising across California's public universities.

The Supreme Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. Harvard College is likely to result in the matriculation of fewer students from historically excluded racial/ethnic groups at more selective colleges and universities and matriculation of more students at less selective colleges and universities. Because of this, it is important to understand how resources for pre-health advising, a modifiable factor that can help increase the diversity of the health workforce, vary across institutions with differing levels of selectivity. Colleges are known to vary in resources, structure, and investment in pre-health advising but data are lacking and there is no estimate of any pre-health advising resource gap. To quantify availability of advising resources and identify perceived challenges in pre-health advising in California's highly diverse public and select private undergraduate institutions. Structured 60-minute Zoom interviews from June 2022 -October 2022 at 18/23 CSU (California State Universities), 9/9 University of California (UC) institutions and 6 select private institutions with varying levels of selectivity. Two investigators independently analyzed interviews using a Grounded Theory Approach. The full study team reviewed transcripts and themes. Pre-health advisor capacity varied greatly across the three types of institutions. CSU: mean = 1 FTE advisor: 24,620 graduates (range: 1: 1,059-1: 150,520); UC mean = 1 FTE advisor: 4,526 graduates (range: 1: 1,912-1: 10,920); private institutions mean = 1 FTE advisor:1,794 graduates (range: 1: 722-1: 5,300). Participants reported common challenges: advising capacity, lack of advisor training, advisor turnover, and student difficulties in accessing clinical opportunities and required coursework. CSU and UC participants noted that these had greatest impact for first generation and racially/ethnically underrepresented students for whom lack of informal professional networks, lack of other mentors, and financial responsibilities complicate college navigation and professional school application. Students at CSU campuses had 5 times less access to pre-health advising per graduate than UC students, and 13 times less than students at private institutions. Much greater investment is needed in California's public institutions, particularly CSUs, to increase equity in access to advising for pre-health professional students. Research should examine pre-health advising resource capacity in other states, especially those that are now facing race-neutral admissions policies at undergraduate institutions and health professions schools.

The structure of parents’ social actions on the zonation policy for new students’ admission

This research explores the structure of parents' social actions regarding the zonation policy for new students' admission at SMKN 1 Rejotangan Tulungagung District. The study focuses on the various structures and meanings of the zonation policy, including the New Family Card (KKB), blessings from the school environment (BLS), Keponakan/Niece and Dulur Dewe/Relatives (KDD), Gandheng Gedek or Gandheng Wall (GG/GT), informal entrustment from special persons in government (TWP), special conversations, and special mandate letters from regional government policy makers. According to Max Weber's theory, parents' social actions include taking action with awareness, ensuring they have something right according to the PPDB policy provisions, using methods and techniques, restricting actions to a predetermined time, selecting and assessing actions, hoping for moral principles when making decisions, and learning about social relations between parents and the PPDB committee.

A review of research on equity in higher education for minority students

In recent years, the issue of equity in higher education for minority students has been a hot topic in academic research. From the perspective of ethnic minority students, this study explores the issue of educational equity in higher education. The collected papers mainly focus on "Research on the equality of admission opportunities for Ethnic minority students", "Research on preferential admission policies for Ethnic Minority Students in college entrance examination" and "Research on solutions to problems in Ethnic minority education based on educational equity". This paper summarizes the existing problems in the development of higher education for minority students from three aspects: starting point, process and result of higher education, and puts forward corresponding effective measures.

Role Models in Action Through YouTube Videos for Engineering Community College Students

Community colleges provide broad access to a college degree due to their less expensive tuition, greater course time offerings, and more open admission policies compared to four-year universities as reported (Juszkiewicz, 2015). These institutions have great potential to diversify who chooses STEM, such as engineering. Such diverse representation is important, because students from different backgrounds can contribute new perspectives that foster creative and innovative approaches to solving problems. However, approximately 40% of the students who enter community college in the U.S. leave before graduation (Xu & Jaggars, 2011). Harnessing the power of social media to reduce attrition, we tested a pilot intervention in which community college students in engineering courses completed a reflection exercise after watching YouTube videos of former engineering students from similar backgrounds who successfully transferred to a four-year college. Quasi-experimental analyses (N = 537) show that students in the intervention received higher engineering course grades and had greater odds of enrolling in an engineering course in the subsequent term compared to those who were not in the intervention. Additionally, we find support for the hypothesis that the intervention has larger benefits for women. Results suggest that hearing from other students about their engineering experience can be a useful tool for improving community college students’ choices and performance.

Pathways to a Succesful Career: Unveiling the PostGraduate Journey – A Tracer Study

This Tracer Study looked into the contributions of the Program Doctor of Philosophy major in Educational Management to the employment status, professional growth , contribution of curricular activities to its graduates as well as the benefits they received from finishing the program. Recommendations for the improvement of the offerings were also sought. The descriptive survey was utilized to gather data from the respondents (n=66). Triangulation was used to validate the data. Results show that a high percentage of the respondents are employed in the government, with permanent status and got promoted after finishing the degree. The greatest contributions of the degrees to the professional competencies of the respondents include: the performance of independent work, critical thinking and intellectual and moral discourses; and evaluation of services and programs offered to clients. The curricular activities namely: research-based activities, core course offerings and major field offerings were the greatest contributors to the professional growth of the graduates. The benefits that the respondents enjoy are job promotions and salary increase, prestige and awards. The recommendations for the improvement of program are: more partnerships and strengthened community extension activities, improved admission policies, curricular and additional PhD Program offerings, strengthening of research and publication endeavors.

Non-Educator Stakeholders and Public-School Principals' Views on the Proposed Amendments to the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996

On 13 October 2017, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) published Government Gazette No 41178 pertaining to the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (hereinafter BELA). The draft bill proposes to amend certain sections of the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996. The DBE gave education stakeholders a window period to make inputs on the proposed Bill. Over 5000 submissions were received.
 On 27 and 28 January 2020, Ms Angie Motshekga (Minister of Basic Education) invited the educator unions and governing body federations to further consultations on the Bill. The Bill was again circulated to the public in 2021 in Government Gazette number 45601 after further amendments.
 In this article, the authors discuss school principals’ (as education stakeholders) opinions on the proposed amendments with a specific focus on school admission and language policies.
 The research on which this article is based was located within the framework of government and management terms like the decentralisation and recentralisation of the powers of principals and school governing bodies (SGBs) and the recent phenomenon of political realism.
 The research took the form of a qualitative case study using triangulation (semi-structured interviews, literature review and document analysis) to gather data.
 The data produced mixed results. Some education stakeholders were very critical of the proposed amendments to the South African Schools Act while other groups welcomed the proposed changes. Some principals felt that the government was employing political realism in rescinding (recentralising) some of the powers that had been devolved to them in 1996 after the dawn of democracy in South Africa. They believed that the recentralisation would impede their autonomy when they carry out their professional and governance duties (the duties the school governing body delegated to the principal) in partnership with their SGBs. They believed it represented a regression to apartheid education. Other principals welcomed a more centralised governance approach where school leadership was dysfunctional and where SGBs provided no meaningful assistance to school principals.

Assessment of College Admission Test Results: Basis for Enhancement of Asscat Admission and Retention Policy

This study aimed to assess the College Admission Test Results as basis for the enhancement of ASSCAT Admission and Retention Policy. A descriptive quantitative design was used in the study. There were Six Hundred Forty-Six research subjects in this study from the College of Teacher Education. Secondary data from the result of the College Admission Test for the first semester of the Academic Year 2022-2023 was utilized in this study. Frequency count and percentage were used to analyze the data gathered. The result of the study shows that the majority of the research subjects were BSEd-Science. It also shows that the results of the college admission test were below the admission criteria. This result may be utilized as a basis for enhancing the institution’s Admission and Retention Policy to establish procedures to consider the performance of all takers. Thus, be able to ­­­­accommodate more student-applicants in the province of Agusan del Sur and neighboring provinces.

Admissible Control Laws for Constrained Linear Power Flow: The General Case

Linearized power flow with line flow and voltage constraints can be modeled as a system of linear inequalities depending on the power injections. When some injections are controlled by the grid operator while others are determined exogenously, robust control aims at determining grid operator's actions under imperfect system observability such that the grid state is feasible for all possible realizations of the exogenous actions. It was shown how to design and analyze such admissible control policies efficiently for the subclass of affine control laws, but this paper shows that there are important cases that require more general control policies. We show that, for the constrained linear power flow setting, general admissible control policies can always be chosen as piecewise affine (PWA) mappings. The PWA mapping can be explicitly characterized offline or control actions can be computed online by solving an optimization problem given a current observation. For the latter setup, we provide an algorithm that verifies offline that the online control scheme is admissible. This verification step is a crucial precondition to apply the online control scheme in real, safety-critical power grids. The proposed framework is demonstrated with applications to voltage regulation in active distribution grids subject to uncertain prosumers and low observability.

Students for Fair Admissions Through the Lens of Interest-Convergence Theory: Reality, Perception, and Fear

In two cases, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina (SFFA), the Supreme Court held that Harvard and UNC violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in their use of race in their admissions process. This Article examines the SFFA decision through the lens of interest-convergence theory. This Article is novel in three respects. It is the first article to explain the SFFA decision in-depth. The opaqueness of the decision has led to significant confusion between commentators, scholars, and universities about the impact of the decision. I conclude that the SFFA decision overturned prior precedent and ended affirmative action in higher education, no matter how carefully crafted the race-conscious admission plan. I also conclude that universities will not be able to ignore the decision, or use race-neutral alternatives, to maintain a critical mass of minority students. Second, this Article is the first to explain the SFFA outcome using interest-convergence theory. I break down the separate interests of Black,[1] Hispanic,[2] White,[3] and Asian-Americans.[4] I find that Black and Hispanic interests remain served by race-conscious admission policies, but that shifting racial demographics and political power dynamics changed the decades-long White interest in supporting affirmative action. I further find that Asian-Americans have an interest in maintaining affirmative action, but that the SFFA outcome aligned with White interests because it permitted universities to continue “negative action” against Asian-Americans in favor of White students. Third, this Article is the first to explain how the perceptions of White Americans about policies that benefit minorities overrides the significant benefits they receive from diverse educational environments. I conclude that the longstanding and concrete benefits that White students receive from a critical mass of minority students on campus has become less important than the perceived threat of such admission policies to the current societal hierarchy. I conclude that interest-convergence theory explains why the Supreme Court overturned decades of precedent and university admission practices: it served the perceived interests of White Americans.

Two-Time Scale Tracking Control of Flexible Robots With Primal-Dual Inverse Reinforcement Learning.

Flexible robots (FRs) are generally designed to be lightweight to achieve rapid motion. However, accompanying vibrations and modeling errors influence tracking control, especially in situations involving reference signal loss. This article develops a two-time scale primal-dual inverse reinforcement learning (PD-IRL) framework for FRs to perform tracking tasks with incomplete reference signals. First, consider the admissible policy as a nonconvex input constraint to guarantee the stable operation of the equipment. Then, FRs imitate the demonstration behaviors of an expert, including both rigid and flexible motions, to achieve a balance in tracking speed and vibration suppression. During the imitation process, nonconvex optimization problems of FRs are transformed into corresponding dual problems to obtain the global optimal policy. Moreover, employing multiple linearly independent paths to explore the state space simultaneously can improve convergence speed. Convergence and stability are studied rigorously. Finally, simulations and comparisons show the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.

AÇÕES AFIRMATIVAS NO ACESSO À EDUCAÇÃO BÁSICA: UM OLHAR SOBRE O COLÉGIO PEDRO II

ABSTRACT: The intention of this article is to analyze the Quota Law (Law 12.711/12) and other affirmative actions implemented by Colégio Pedro II (CPII) and their contributions to the expansion of educational opportunities. We seek to answer two main questions: what affirmative actions were adopted in their admission selection processes over time? And, what changes are perceived in the sociodemographic profile of entrants, especially since the Quota Law? The study is exploratory and documentary, with descriptive analyses based on secondary data obtained from the CPII website and microdata from the School Census. We used as reference three cohorts of entrants in the 6th grade of Elementary School and the 1st grade of regular and integrated High School, in the years 2012, 2014, and 2016. The main results show that since 2005, CPII has adopted an affirmative action policy for student admission with a reservation of 50% of the spots for public school graduates. Starting in 2013, the Quota Law was implemented in both the integrated and regular High School, adding to the existing public school criteria, income criteria, race/color, and disability criteria. The analysis of the students' socio-demographic profile reinforces the contribution of CPII's affirmative action policies and the Quota Law in expanding access opportunities, especially for Black/Brown students.