Although it is well established that college entrance exams have become a key factor for admission to selective institutions, less is known about the influence of test scores in relation to other academic factors in the evaluation of a student's application file. This study conducts a randomized-controlled trial to determine whether providing…

In this paper, we address whether the provision of contextual information about where students live and learn has the potential to expand postsecondary opportunities to students from disadvantaged neighborhoods and high schools. To examine this question, we describe the results of field experiments with admissions officers working in eight…

Although it is well established that college entrance exams have become a key factor for admission to selective institutions, less is known about the influence of test scores in relation to other academic factors in the evaluation of a student's application file. This study conducts a randomized-controlled trial to determine whether providing…

This mixed-methods study used open-response survey data, focus groups, and an experimental simulation to explore how 311 admissions officers defined and used concepts of holistic review in selective college admissions. We found that 3 distinct definitions of holistic review predominate in the field: whole file, whole person, and whole context. We…

Attending a selective college or university has a notable impact on the likelihood of graduation, graduate school attendance, social networks, and career earnings. Given these short-term and long-term benefits, surprisingly little research has directly explored the factors that might promote or detract from equitable admissions decisions at these…

Low-socioeconomic status (SES) students are underrepresented at selective colleges, but the role that admissions offices play is poorly understood. Because admissions offices often have inconsistent information on high school contexts, we conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine whether providing detailed information on high school…

The emerging female advantage in education has received considerable attention in the popular media and recent research. We examine a persistent exception to this trend: women's underrepresentation in America's most competitive colleges and universities. Using nationally generalizable data spanning four decades, we evaluate evidence for…

Selective colleges and universities purport to consider students' achievement in the context of the academic opportunities available in their high schools. Thus, students who "maximize" their curricular opportunities should be more likely to gain admission. Using nationally representative data, we examine the effect of "maximizing…

Employing NCES databases, we investigate how college selectivity influences job satisfaction and prestige from the 1970s to the 1990s and across different racial categories. We find that the effect of college selectivity has essentially disappeared over time and that minority students are particularly disadvantaged with respect to job satisfaction.

Access to the nation's most selective colleges remains starkly unequal, with students in the lowest income quartile constituting less than 4% of enrollment. A popular explanation for this phenomenon is that low-income students "undermatch" by attending less selective colleges when their credentials predict admission to more highly…

The increasing concentration of wealthy students at highly selective colleges is widely perceived, but few analyses examine the underlying dynamics of higher education stratification over time. To examine these dynamics, the authors build an analysis data set of four cohorts from 1972 to 2004. They find that low-income students have made…

Recent studies have suggested that a causal link exists between college rankings and subsequent admissions indicators. However, it is unclear how these effects vary across institutional type (i.e., national universities vs. liberal arts colleges) or whether these effects persist when controlling for other factors that affect admissions outcomes.…