Developmental education reform has shown promising evidence toward improving short-term outcomes, yet questions remain about whether these early gains contribute momentum toward mid-term and longer-term postsecondary success. In 2014, Florida implemented one of the nation's most comprehensive developmental education reforms. Many students became…

The effects of affirmative action on the incentives to human capital accumulation are ambiguous from a theoretical perspective and the scarce empirical evidence on the matter provides mixed results. In this paper, we address this issue by investigating the impacts of Brazil's Law of Quotas on the students' performance in the college entrance exam,…

Contemporary technology, along with the tangible/virtual duality of present-day learner consciousness, are, in the authors' opinion, necessitating and enabling a fundamental educational transformation. A central feature of this development will be 'letting the learners lead', including (from secondary onwards) their identification of the content…

Since its inception in 1949, over 1,500 studies have investigated the validity of the GRE General Test to predict its performance criteria in higher education (Klieger, Bridgeman, Tannenbaum, & Cline, 2016). The present review paper sought to examine the predictive validity of the GRE General Test. Factors affecting the predictive validity…

Just Face It presents seven "faces" codified by Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen and Joseph Hager, which can be linked through a kinesthetic process of association with vocabulary words that are frequently encountered on standardized college admission tests. The article is based on "Method for Facilitating Contextual Vocabulary…

As did the vast majority of higher education institutions, SUNY implemented test-optional admissions policies across all campuses for students applying to enroll in Fall 2021. SUNY and its peers made this decision in direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which reduced applicants' access to SAT/ACT testing. A majority of these schools have…

The current study is a conceptual replication of the influence of an advanced educational opportunity and several student propensities to learn on a college-readiness assessment for mathematics (ACT scores) among an important and under-studied group of students. We focused on a sample of predominantly Black students from economically-disadvantaged…

Direct Admissions policies, first pioneered by Idaho in 2015, aim to simplify the path to college for high school students by proactively admitting students to state colleges and universities. Idaho's decision to implement Direct Admissions was motivated by a desire to boost its relatively low college-going rates and ensure that more of its high…

For years, discussions on inequality in college admissions have addressed standardized tests, but less is known about inequality in non-standardized components of applications. We analyzed extracurricular activity descriptions in 6,054,104 applications submitted through the Common Application using natural language processing methods. Overall,…

A central exam with objective criteria in student selection and placement for higher education in Turkey had not been applied until 1960s. Each higher education institution used to conduct its own exam according to the demand density. No exams were made when the applications were sometimes below the available capacity. In the 1960s, there were so…

This study investigated factors influencing Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE) pretest and post-test scores for a sample (N=1116 students) collected in the introductory calculus-based mechanics class at a large eastern land-grant university. Several academic and noncognitive factors were examined using correlation analysis and linear…

This study examines the roles and challenges of external quality assurance in reviewing learning outcome assessments of Japanese universities. Following criticism that Japan has overly relied on the difficulty of entrance examination as a quality metric for a given institution, rather than graduates' competencies, there is more pressure for…

This Focus On uses data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) to showcase that, as a group, recipients of physics bachelor's degrees tend to do well on two prominent standardized tests for medical school and law school admission. Although only a small percent of the physics bachelor's…

As part of a larger research study entitled "Where Do Test Scores Fit in a Test-Optional Environment," the authors surveyed students who took the ACT on June 11, 2022, in order to better understand why high school students would take a standardized test like the ACT when they knew they were applying to test-optional institutions. Among…

The purpose of this non-experimental quantitative study was to evaluate the relationships between completion of high school dual enrollment courses and subsequent success of first-time, full-time community college students as measured by completion of an associate degree and the time it took to complete the degree. In addition to comparing dual…