This quantitative study used archived student records to determine which high school and postsecondary factors are the most significant predictors of college retention among 2,175 students enrolled at the University of West Georgia in Fall 2018. A two-tailed t-test was conducted for research questions one and two to analyze the high school GPAs…

This descriptive correlational study examined the predictive relationships between ACT composite scores, high school GPA, ACT testing attempts, and gender with teacher candidate's overall performance on the edTPA and each of the three edTPA instructional tasks (Task 1, Task 2, and Task 3). The edTPA is a portfolio-based subject-specific teaching…

Early college entrance programs have existed in the United States since the 1950s, but in-depth research on academic success in these programs is lacking. Every year, early college entrance programs utilize a variety of data-gathering and candidate-screening techniques to select hundreds of students for admission into these accelerated programs.…

Graduate Records Examinations (GRE) remain an important criterion for admission to the graduate program. This study explored the predictive role of the GRE for college success among deaf students because most deaf and hard-of-hearing students experience lifelong difficulties in English language and literacy because of their different language…

The purpose of this study is to measure the appropriateness of the existing admissions requirements as related to the likelihood of graduation. We employ a five-year sample of students admitted into the graduate program and selected a cutoff date to allow sufficient time for most of each cohort to complete their studies. Following the general…

In this paper, we study how well SAT scores, high school GPA, and undergraduate precalculus grades relate to undergraduate calculus grades at a 4-year private nonprofit university that does not have a placement exam. In addition, we compare the success in calculus of two groups of students, both of whom require two semesters to pass calculus. The…

Degree completion on theoretical time is a phenomenon seldom explored in the higher education literature. We applied variance components models and random coefficients models to the microdata of an entire entrant cohort of first-time, full-time undergraduate students who completed their three-year programme at a Portuguese institution during the…

Because of their open enrollment policies, community colleges serve large numbers of students whose K-12 education has left them unready to succeed in college-level courses. Colleges typically use test scores such as the ACT to place students into appropriate course levels. However, the use of test-based measures alone has been criticized as being…

I show that there are better measures of student college performance than grade point average (GPA) by undertaking a fine-grained empirical investigation of grading within a large public university. The value of using GPA as a measure of comparative performance is undermined by academically weaker students taking courses where the grading is more…

The purpose of this study is to understand how well the national SAT Validity Study results (Westrick et al., 2019), which is based on the entering class of 2017, generalize to other cohorts of students and how well the SAT predicts longer term outcomes beyond first-year grade point average (FYGPA) and second-year retention. Results show that the…

This study investigated the value of ACT Composite scores and high school GPA (HSGPA) in predicting first-year college GPA (FYGPA) and degree completion of students with disabilities who took the ACT with accommodations and enrolled at a two-year or four-year public institution in a single state in the southern US. Descriptive analyses found that…

Students' motivational beliefs, such as disciplinary intelligence mindsets, can influence their physics performance and persistence. Intelligence mindset beliefs have long been argued to fall along of continuum between fixed and growth mindsets. Those with fixed physics mindsets believe that ability in physics is innate and unchangable, while…

Students' self-efficacy in physics classes can play a key role in shaping course outcomes. Prior research has shown that women have a lower self-efficacy than men in calculus-based introductory physics courses. We administered a validated survey to 564 students to investigate the gender differences in self-efficacy and how it predicts student…

In this study, we investigated female and male students' sense of belonging and their academic performance measured by the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and course grades in a calculus-based introductory physics course at a large public university in the United States. We find that compared to male students, female students' sense of belonging was…

Institutions of higher education face a great deal of pressure to be accessible, inclusive, and diverse, but these goals should not come at the expense of maintaining high standards. Universal and vigilantly enforced standards exist not only to safeguard students' best interests, but are crucial to the academic integrity and core educational…