Social and emotional (SE) skills are known to be linked with many important life outcomes, including academic performance, performance on standardized college entrance exams, and college enrollment, although research on enrollment is limited. In this report, the authors present data points from a study that evaluated test-criterion validity…

A majority of high school graduates aspire to earn a college degree (ACT, 2016), yet many students are graduating from high school unprepared to do college-level work. As a result, about one-third of college freshmen enroll in at least one developmental course upon entry to college (Skomsvold, 2014). Because developmental courses are often not…

Colleges are increasingly interested in identifying the factors that maximize their enrollment. These factors allow enrollment management administrators to identify the applicants who have higher tendency to enroll at their institutions and accordingly to better allocate their money rewards (i.e., scholarship and financial aid). In this paper we…

A plethora of research spanning several decades has attempted to understand predictors of retention and graduation in undergraduate bachelor's degree programs. The topic is no less important today, as larger and larger swaths of the American population attend college each year. Studies have demonstrated that key demographic variables, indicators…

The transition from eighth grade to high school results in a substantial drop in course performance for many students. These declines in performance lead students to fall off-track for obtaining high school and college degrees. By using data on students' middle grade performance, high school staff can set goals for their students to help them meet…

The purpose of this study was to understand why graduation rates of African American male students from four-year historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) within a six-year period were not on par with those of other races and ethnicities and, in particular, whether the reasons African American male students drop out rather than persist…

This investigation sought to determine when colleges should conduct assessments to identify first-year students at risk of dropping out. Thirty-five variables were used to predict the persistence of 2,024 first-year students from four universities in the southeastern United States. The predictors were subdivided into groups according to when they…

Ample correlational evidence indicates that high school GPA is usually better than admission test scores in predicting first-year college GPA, although test scores have incremental predictive validity. Many people conclude that this correlational evidence translates directly to usefulness in making admission decisions. The issue of usefulness is…

This study examines the differential effects on student subgroups of using the ACT® College Readiness Assessment Composite (ACTC) score and high school grade point average (HSGPA) for making admission decisions. The subgroup characteristics investigated include race/ethnicity, gender, and income. For each student subgroup, we examine the effect of…

A logit model predicting student outcomes for a gateway course, Math for Liberal Arts, was successfully developed which fits the data well. Two variables, ACT math score and high school GPA, were found to be significant predictors of achieving a C or better in Math for Liberal Arts. A practical implication of the study suggests that with just two…

Six methods for smoothing double-entry expectancy tables (tables that relate two predictor variables to probability of attaining a selected level of success on a criterion) were compared using data for entering students at 85 colleges and universities. ACT composite scores and self-reported high school grade averages were used to construct…