College Admissions Policies Research Articles

Why and how socioeconomic factors should be used in selective college admissions

AbstractThis chapter describes and discusses the socioeconomic factors pressing for consideration in selective college admission policies and processes. It also presents an institutional example of using socioeconomic factors in a selective college admission process.

Fulfilling the Promise of Small High Schools

Small high schools offer the kinds of environments we need if we are to try out some of our newer ideas in school redesign, Mr. Myatt argues. States and districts should pay attention to what these new institutions are making possible. SMALL HIGH SCHOOLS are big news, and rightfully so. They are showing us new ways to provide the social and emotional structures needed to support high achievement. Moreover, if we are open to learning from them, they can help us think differently about curriculum, assessment, and standard setting and can contribute much to the renewal of the teaching profession. Whether it's creating small neighborhood schools, scaling up successful national models, or implementing the small learning community conversion strategy to help our large comprehensive high schools become kinder and gentler places, the small high school movement offers a welcome window on the future of secondary education. For decades, the American high school has remained insulated from new ideas and reasoned changes by a thicket of extraordinarily interlocked statutes, regulations, college admissions policies, and contractual agreements, as well as by our society's own myths and revisionist memories. There is growing consensus, however, that many of the new, highly functional small schools are more trust- and community-oriented, with staff members who are freer and more likely to carve out new working relationships, design new systems, and set different priorities. This agreement to co-construct new schools from within offers unprecedented opportunities for the long-overdue redesign of our high schools. Initiatives such as those funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are banking on this premise. The planners of small schools have also begun to change the conversation from per pupil to per graduate. Small high schools cost a bit more up front, but there is no shortage of data and experience showing that funding a completed education is much more cost-effective than dealing with the poverty, unwanted pregnancies, crime, and unemployment that too often accompany life on the margins. The pressure on inner-city schools to address social inequities remains enormous, but few large high schools, in their planning and priority setting, have shown the ability to respond to the real needs of students and families. Featuring small houses, well-developed advisory programs, the looping of students and teachers over several years, and proven community engagement strategies, small high schools can reduce the frequency of negative behaviors both in and beyond school by creating intimacy and deep relationships with students. These are nimble institutions, committed to and capable of providing the care and concern that today's students and families require. Small, responsive schools are, quite simply, more likely to keep students until they finish the coursework required for a diploma and to help them leave high school with authentic skills and realistic plans for the future. Beyond the growing public awareness of the Columbine effect of alienation and unhealthy social stratification in many large schools, there is abundant evidence that small high schools are better at creating and sustaining the healthy intellectual and social climates needed for the richest kinds of teaching and learning. Small school size is consistently linked to positive outcomes in school climate, test scores, college attendance, and postsecondary employment. Qualitative studies of smaller schools have observed a genuine sense of belonging for both students and teachers, higher expectations for student engagement, and fewer distractions within the learning environment. These are precisely the conditions under which teachers can help students take greater responsibility for their own learning and establish both the culture and tools of inquiry-based instruction. Small high schools, tied strongly to their neighborhood institutions, are becoming deft at inviting community business and higher education partners into the schools on a regular basis to help teachers and students tune their work and to assist in developing performance rubrics that align with workplace and college standards. …

Retaking the SAT

Using data on applicants to three selective universities, we analyze a college applicant’s decision to retake the SAT. We model this decision as an optimal search problem, and use the model to assess the impact of college admissions policies on retaking behavior. The most common test score ranking policy, which utilizes only the highest of all submitted scores, provides large incentives to retake the test. This places certain applicants at a disadvantage: those with high test-taking costs, those attaching low values to college admission, and those with ‘‘pessimistic’’ prior beliefs regarding their own ability.

From Our Readers: Preferential Treatment for Whom? In Support of Rational School and College Admissions Policies

From Our Readers: Preferential Treatment for Whom? In Support of Rational School and College Admissions Policies

Benefits and costs of the SAT for college admissions policies

Benefits and costs of the SAT for college admissions policies

Equivalent to What? GED High School Equivalency Tests

Recently we have witnessed increasing concern over the problems people have who find themselves outside the mainstream of education, problems they have in moving into-or back into-the official system, and problems they have in receiving credentials and subsequent rewards the system provides. Ivan Illich and the romantic and revisionist critics have not been alone in calling for remedial action. Head Start, the University Without Walls, special education, bilingual programs, Upward Bound, the alternative school movement, and open college admission policies all represent attempts to provide access or reaccess to the educational escalator for sections of our population. Predating all these movements, however, and continuing to exert a profound influence, though with little fanfare or public acknowledgement, is the General Education Development (GED) Testing Service of the American Council on Education (ACE). Since 1943, millions who never graduated from high school have taken GED tests, seeking high school equivalency status. Largely or solely on the results of these tests, each of the fifty United States as well as the District of Columbia, American Samoa, the Canal Zone, Puerto Rico, and most of the provinces and territories of Canada award high school equivalency diplomas. In 1978 over a half-million candidates in the United States, Canada, and other countries sat for these tests. Over the years, this credential has won wide acceptance by employers, the armed services, colleges, universities, and licensing authorities. For purposes of employment, promotion, and college admission, satisfactory GED test scores now offer a widely acceptable alternative to the standard high school transcript and diploma. Fairly representative, Massachusetts has offered a High School Equivalency Certificate since 1946. Until 1967, the Department of Education awarded it on the bases of a combination of GED test scores, prior education, work experience, and armed service credits. Since 1967, however, the Department has made the award on the basis of a single criterion-satisfactory GED test scores. The tests consist of five individual sections: mathematics, social studies, science, reading skills, and writing skills. Mathematics covers arithmetic, algebra, and geometry and requires a student to function in real life situations, using computation skills and interpreting graphs, tables, and diagrams. Social studies and science ask students to read passages and use the information to analyze or solve problems. Science questions tap students' understanding of basic principles of biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics. In social studies, students must demonstrate a minimum of factual knowledge about United States (or Canadian) history, geography, politics, and economics, but they are expected to show general knowledge, an understanding of basic principles, and the ability to identify causes and effects, to interpret meanings, and to draw valid conclusions. The battery's two subtests dealing explicitly with English are the Reading Skills and Writing Skills sections. In the first, students read passages of standard literature and excerpts from current newspapers and magazines and, through answers to multiple choice questions, demonstrate how well they understand what they have read, and their ability to interpret meaning and draw infer-

Educational background on entry and drop-out from part-time undergraduate studies

The study was designed to investigate the relationship between differences in educational training at the time of entry into part-time undergraduate studies and persistence with such a program. The sample consisted of 612 students who enrolled for the first time in a part-time evening undergraduate program. A specially designed questionnaire was used as the chief measuring instrument. Possession of a high school diploma, having not repeated a year in high school, undertaking certain types of training, and delaying university entry by a year or more were found to be conducive to persistence. High school matriculation average, type of high school attended, amount of delay, and reasons for delaying entry to university were not found to be related to drop-out. The findings of the study stand in sharp contrast to previously reported research. OPEN DOOR COLLEGE ADMISSION policies require that previous educational attainment up to a given level may not be demanded as a prerequisite for entry into col lege. Many students who gain entry to college through such policies study on a part-time basis. Hay good (6) reported data to suggest that only 5% of the part-time students in an undergraduate program complete their studies. A study of the relationship between educational background on entry and drop-out from part-time undergraduate studies has become a matter of considerable interest both at the theoretical and the policy-making levels. Ulmer and Verner (11) found a lower rate of discontinu ance among students admitted on the basis of the General Educational Development Test than for students who were high school graduates. Other studies (2, 7, 8) show that students admitted on the basis of maturity do exceptionally well in university credit courses. Boshier (4), on the other hand, failed to link any factor in the personal background of the student with drop-out. He stressed the role of the institutional environment as the major determining factor. Thus, a student who discontinued in a given institution may be a prime candidate for completing his studies in another institution. Similarly, Eagle (5) failed to establish any difference between persisters and drop-outs on high school average, high school curriculum, or type of high school attended. Ulmer (10) reports that adults who do not have a high school diploma tend to show greater per sistence than those who do. Astin (1) used a representative sample of 217 institutions in the United States to develop a national profile of college drop-outs. His data, however, were restricted to full-time students. Tinto (9) has pub lished a theoretical synthesis of drop-out research in the field of higher education, but his large bibliography makes scant reference to drop-out among part-time students. Much of the research in this field has been done either on the full-time student or on the part-time student attend ing adult education, extra-mural, or community college classes. The purpose of this investigation was to study the This content downloaded from 157.55.39.30 on Fri, 27 May 2016 05:56:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 104 JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL EDUCATION generalizability of previously reported research to the part time students studying in a regular evening university. The study was designed to investigate the relationship between differences in educational background on entry into part time undergraduate studies at an evening university and persistence with such a program.

Admissions, academic policy, and external relations

Discussing the effects of admission and academic policies and procedures, one could focus on specific groups or agencies within communities of the community college. This approach would miss the full impact of the discussion, however. For all these groups consist, at base, of actual people who can also become college students. As students, they no longer remain external. They may enroll classes to earn a degree, obtain a promotion, learn a hobby, just learn, discover who they are, or have a night out. Whatever the reasons, they are students and interact intimately with the college. While everything a college does may effect its external relations within the college's communities, admission and academic policies and processes possess power to influence profoundly and pervasively. Such policies can affect the individual person within the community directly and many people indirectly. We assume here that a moder community college's external relations should allow people to perceive it as what it is and that it is what it purports to be: an open door, egalitarian institution, performance based and community oriented, interested meeting as many of its community education needs as appropriate to its mission. However, the community college should be understood for what it is, not what it might pretend, regardless of consequences. If not the institution described above, the community college should not build a false image the public mind; if it is, it should not communicate otherwise. Community colleges like to discuss open-door admissions policies they claim to follow, the thing higher education today. According to Birenbaum, national consensus reveals that . .. everyone can be educated and should be educated to the full limit of his abilities and desires.' Frequently, however, an admissions statement a catalog includes a number of disclaimers. A student must prove can benefit from instruction, be a school graduate or equivalent, be 18 years of age or older if has not completed high school, and/or prove he can be successful the curriculum of his choice. Ambiguous statements certainly, but the message sent, sometimes loudly and clearly and sometimes quite subtly, is selection, not extension of opportunity to all who would try but rather provided only to those who have earned it. Screening out rather than inclusion in is the essence of the communication. For what reason do we add these statements to an affirmation of open-door

Brief Notes: Archival Experiments with College Admission Policies

Brief Notes: Archival Experiments with College Admission Policies

Archival Experiments with College Admission Policies

Colleges and universities in the 1970's will face a problem they would have never expected a decade ago. The problem is that of too few students. Many admissions officers, who for years have needed to screen out students may now seek additional students. The latter, while previously inadmissible, would nevertheless succeed in college. This requires experimenting with alternative admissions procedures. The goal of the present investigation was to estimate the effects of selecting students on the basis of their high school grade point average as compared to the present method of using high school average (HSA). (Academic classes are English, Mathematics, Natural Science, History, and Foreign Language.) The general logic underlying the use of academic HSA is twofold. First, it is believed that academic classes are more similar in content to college classes than are such nonacademic courses as automobile shop or home economics and, therefore, better predictors of college success. Second, high school students receive higher grades in nonacademic classes (as compared to academic classes) which might imply that the regression equation for college GPA on total HSA would have a lower intercept than for academic HSA. Hence, the expected college GPA for a given HSA should be lower for total HSA than for academic HSA. It is true that HSA is usually the best single predictor of college GPA with a correlation coefficient of at least .5 usually reported (e.g., Baird, 1969; Brown & Wolins, 1965; Humphreys, 1968; Lewis, 1966; Richards & Lutz, 1968). However, there is a scarcity of studies which investigate the validity of the components of HSA, specifically grades achieved in the different types of classes taken in high school. While HSA is a composite which can be computed in alternative ways, few studies even mention how this composite was obtained. Gelso and Klock (1967) report several studies in which total HSA was compared with academic HSA as a predictor of college performance. These indicated that total HSA was as good a predictor as academic HSA. In several investigations, high school grades in specific subject

What Are Current Developaients in College Admissions Policies?

What Are Current Developaients in College Admissions Policies?

What Are Current Developments in College Admissions Policies?

What Are Current Developments in College Admissions Policies?

What Are Recent Developments in College-Admission Policies?

What Are Recent Developments in College-Admission Policies?

What Are Recent Developments in College-Admission Policies?

What Are Recent Developments in College-Admission Policies?

State Constitutional and Statutory Limitations on College Admission Policies

State Constitutional and Statutory Limitations on College Admission Policies