This book analyzes the effects of the Open Admissions Program at the City University of New York (CUNY) during its first year. The project undertook three tasks: (a) to clarify the issues surrounding the concept of open admissions in higher education; (b) to describe the curricula and programs developed by the various colleges of CUNY in response to the first year of open admissions; and (c) to assess the impact of this first year of open admissions on the freshmen who entered CUNY in the fall of 1970. Data analysis focused on two kinds of outcomes: (a) those related to cognitive and academic achievement, and (b) those related to motivation and attitudes. Among the basic findings of the study are the following: (a) freshmen improved their reading and arithmetic achievement test scores significantly between spring 1970 and spring 1971. The increase was about the same for open admissions and regular admission students and for those at two-year colleges and four-year colleges, (b) the best predictors of freshman grade point average were the usual variables of sex, high school grades, high school rank, and achievement test scores, (c) the average first year grades of CUNY students were somewhat higher than those of freshmen in general, as reported in data on national norms in 1967, (d) CUNY students were somewhat less satisfied with their first year of college than were students nationally, (e) of the four groups within the CUNY community, faculty members and administrators were most inclined, and upperclassmen least inclined to view open admissions favorably; incoming freshmen occupied a middle position, (f) open admissions or regular admissions status per se was a relatively unimportant predictor of first-year outcomes. Although the two groups differed in many ways on the criteria examined, it was clear that open- admissions students brought with them to college a number of characteristics, besides past achievements, which proved to be more important predictors of first-year outcomes. (Author/AM)