The urban mission of two-year community colleges with open enrollment policies is to train, retain and graduate students from all walks of life, including the poor, displaced, under-employed, and unemployed. This mission can be undermined if management decisions are not informed by detailed enrollment data, especially on how the timing of student…

College counselors regard themselves as teachers and educators, but they are something else as well. They are links between the location of childhood and the larger, more risky terrain of first adulthood. College counselors prepare students for an actual, not merely figurative, journey, the prospect of which fill students and their parents with…

This article, from "Achieving Diversity: Strategies for the Recruitment and Retention of Traditionally Underrepresented Students," which in its entirety, won the 1993 Muir Award, discusses the difficult issues of: (a) enhancing higher educational access for populations which have been historically underserved ("egalitarianism"), and (b) insuring…

In this article, the author states that no matter how experienced and exposed to life college freshmen may appear, no matter how sophisticated they may seem, they are vulnerable and unsure of themselves a lot of the time. The child in them grapples with the emerging adult; they are eager to enter adulthood but understandably fearful of what they…

This article, from the "Journal of College Admission's" Special Diversity Issue, which in its entirety has won the 1997 Muir Award, discusses various misconceptions regarding individuals with multiple learning disabilities and whether or not these individuals should consider college as an option. The author contends that students with learning…

This article from the "Journal of College Admission's" Special Diversity Issue (which in its entirety won the 1997 Muir Award), presents a compilation of three speeches, given at the 51st National Conference in Boston, Massachusetts. The preface, by Mary Lee Hoganson, serves to bind the three speeches together under the cohesive question, "Are…

In this brief article, the author relates his experiences both as associate director of undergraduate admission at Duke University (North Carolina), and later as director on college placement at the South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics. [This article has been reprinted in this 2006 issue of "Journal of College Admission."…

In this article, the author explains how the process of educating parents about the college admission process has evolved during the last 30 years. He divides his recollections and observations of how this process has changed into three historical periods: the Dark Ages, the Renaissance and the Modern Era, as yet untitled by historians. [This…

In this article, the author expresses his concern about the current state of the profession and the changes in college admission processes. Paper has been replaced with computers, counseling has been replaced with marketing, and the emphasis on "fit" has been replaced by a preoccupation with prestige, or perceived prestige. These changes point to…

This article is a research project which explores that problem with a particular view toward underrepresented students whose life and profile often do not match the life and profile of admission officers who recruit and select them. The authors assert that if vast changes are made with regard to the experiences and the richness that…

In this article, the author describes "reading season," the time of year when admission counselors witness the beauty of the educational process that produces not only outstanding students, but altruistic, artistic, athletic, and creative young men and women. She also discusses "decision time," the period when an applicant is notified of his or…

Professional program admission at U.S. universities has become increasingly competitive in the last 20 years, due to enrollment caps, core class requirements, transfer course acceptance, industry draw, and the appeal of starting salaries. As the competition steadily increases, students often find methods to exploit traditional policy, resulting in…

The Standardized Letter of Recommendation (SLR) is a Web-based admission tool designed to replace traditional, narrative letters of recommendation with a more systematic and equitable source of information about applicants to institutions of higher education. The SLR includes a rating scale and open-ended response space that prompt evaluators to…

Higher education administrators are seeking to identify additional effective student pre-college predictors of university academic success to utilize in an increasingly competitive admission environment. A study of more than 3,000 first-year students assessed a traditional pre-college predictor, the ACT, along with a new potential pre-college…

This study explores graduate faculty involvement in graduate student recruitment at a research university to determine if, because of challenges to enrollment trends, faculty are involved, and, if they are, is it because administrators mandate it or because faculty have a professional desire to be involved? The sample size consisted of 148…