Divergent Approaches to Access: How Selective College Admissions Offices Recruit Lower-Income, First-Generation, and Working-Class Students

In recent years, selective colleges and universities have made diversifying their student bodies a top priority, yet the class diversity on these campuses has barely shifted. While most research on class disparities in college admissions focuses on student explanations, this study seeks to understand how campus admissions approaches to recruitment may also contribute to why so few lower-income, first-generation, and/or working-class students (LIFGWC students) attend selective colleges. To address this question, we conducted interviews with seven admissions officers from selective campuses with both relatively strong and weak records of LIFGWC students recruitment. Institutions with stronger records of recruiting LIFGWC students actively sought out new initiatives to make their college more accessible for LIFGWC students, and these actions were motivated by a shared focus on improving larger societal inequality. Although campuses with weaker records also expanded their recruitment strategies, their efforts were often piecemeal and motivated by competition for students and institutional rankings rather than a larger mission to improve diversity and equity. These findings suggest that institutional missions and philosophies are central to increasing access.

Using Personal Statements in College Admissions: An Investigation of Gender Bias and the Effects of Increased Structure

Personal statements are among the most commonly used instruments in college admissions procedures. Yet, little research on their reliability, validity, and fairness exists. The first aim of this paper was to investigate hypotheses about adverse impact and underprediction for female applicants, which could result from lower tendencies to use agentic language compared to male applicants. Second, we examined if rating personal statements in a more structured manner would increase reliability and validity. Using personal statements (250 words) from a large cohort of applicants to an undergraduate psychology program at a Dutch University, we found no evidence for adverse impact for female applicants or more agentic language use by male applicants, and no relationship between agentic language use and personal statement ratings. In contrast, we found that personal statements of female applicants were rated slightly more positively than those of males. Exploratory analyses suggest that female applicants’ better writing skills might explain this difference. A more structured approach to rating personal statements yielded higher, but still only ‘moderate’ inter-rater reliability, and virtually identical, negligible predictive validity for first year GPA and dropout.

Exams or applications? Elite Taiwanese students’ perceptions and navigation of college admissions systems

Studies often portray elite students as self-interested adolescents who justify educational selection systems that favor them. However, this perspective neglects critiques of the college admissions system on the part of the elite, who often have no other option than to support it as fulfilling the ideals of fairness. This study examines academic elite students’ perceptions of college admissions systems when they are given choices as to which system to use. Data for this study come from surveys, interviews, and participant observation in Taiwan, where students are selected through two systems: exam-based selections and application-based selections. The findings show that students in elite high schools perceive whichever system that benefits them to be the fairest. By narrowly defining fairness as family influence on admission outcomes, these students downplay the institutional advantages they enjoy and present themselves as deserving candidates. Using the example of elite Taiwanese students, this study highlights that elites justify privilege based on self-interest and strategically navigate admissions systems to accrue advantages.