This article examines the challenges facing the pool of global applicants to US colleges and evaluates the practices of the internationaI IECs who currently fill the void that exists between applicants and admission officers. The author, is a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she researches ethical issues in…

This article advocates for increased attention on the college admission letter to strengthen conditionally admitted students' academic self-efficacy as they begin the college experience. Although first communications are often considered perfunctory, the language of admission materials has strong potential to help at-risk students begin…

As human services professionals, we in higher education value helping people and often get personally invested in their stories. The people we serve, primarily students, face challenges in applying and paying for college, completing coursework and degrees, and finding employment after graduation. Along the way, college administrators strive to…

College and university quality--what it is and how to identify it--is a preoccupation of many prospective college students and their parents, high school counselors, and college admission personnel. Regardless of class, race, and gender, it is no longer enough for a growing number of individuals simply to attend college: matriculating at an…

Thirty years after the creation of federal student financial aid programs through the Higher Education Act of 1965, the link between moral character and student financial aid programs is once again influencing the public policy debate. A careful look at the debate, though, shows that the nature of concerns has shifted. In the past, the question…

When addressing the best ways to utilize high school visits, education professionals must remember that while student academic preparation, family support and financial aid improve student access to postsecondary education, the adult tutelage provided to students, regarding the requirements for postsecondary success and the process of securing…

Stealth applicants who do not flow through the traditional admission funnel now represent nearly one-third of the national applicant pool. This study employs a consumer behavior framework to examine the behaviors of stealth applicants at a private university. The findings provide a rich illustration of how stealth applicants search for college.…

This case study examines the collegial behavior of enrollment professionals within an admission consortium. Resource Dependency Theory provides a guiding framework for the analysis and discussion of the findings. Data collection for this case study was derived from interviews with enrollment deans and directors who represent public universities…

Over the past few years, social networking has exploded into a massive medium that has captured the attention of a large portion of the American population. The ever-growing social networking site(s) (SNS) movement has filled a networking gap and thus, has presented higher education institutions with unique opportunities (Reid 2009) to further…

The College Board's SAT[R] Score Choice[TM] policy allows students to choose which set(s) of scores to send to colleges and universities to which they plan to apply. Based on data gathered before the implementation of that policy, the following study evaluated the predictive validity of the various sets of SAT scores. The value of five score sets…

Using third-party education agents is a well-established practice in many countries. As a result, the number of international students placed by agents has grown considerably over the past years. However, in the US, the practice of using agents to increase international enrollment still carries a derogatory connotation in the educational…

It has become universally known that Americans as a nation have fallen behind other nations in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). According to the National Science and Engineering Indicators, produced by the National Science Foundation in 2006, the United States has one of the lowest STEM to non-STEM degree…

College Web sites are often the first structured encounter a student has with a prospective college or university. Outside of serving as a marketing tool (Williams 2000), very little literature exists on the functional purpose of a college's Web site. Almost all college sites show an informational and transactional tool for currently enrolled…

The entrepreneurial admission sector is comprised of commercial enterprises aimed at helping students increase their odds of admission, as well as providing general college information to the masses. As for-profit entities, a goal of companies in this sector is to maximize revenue and profit. Existing research identifies four main activities as…

In order to understand the effects that consumer culture may have on modern youth, this article first traces a brief history of branding in the United States throughout the 20th Century to develop a context and precedent for the argument that the current generation of students applying to college has developed in a society saturated with branding,…