Modeling Preferential Admissions at Elite Liberal Arts Colleges

This paper presents the results of a model that simulates the effects of varying preferential admissions policies on the academic profile of a set of 35 small liberal arts colleges. An underlying assumption is that all schools in the set use the same ratio of preferential to non-preferential admissi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inResearch in higher education journal Vol. 19
Main Authors Cockburn, Sally, Hewitt, Gordon, Kelly, Timothy
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Academic and Business Research Institute 01.04.2013
Subjects
Admission Criteria
Class Size
College Admission
College Entrance Examinations
Educational Policy
Institutional Characteristics
Liberal Arts
Profiles
Reputation
SAT (College Admission Test)
Scores
Selective Admission
Small Colleges
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Summary:This paper presents the results of a model that simulates the effects of varying preferential admissions policies on the academic profile of a set of 35 small liberal arts colleges. An underlying assumption is that all schools in the set use the same ratio of preferential to non-preferential admissions. The model predicts that even drastic changes in this ratio have little effect on these institutions' comparative academic profile, as measured by the mean SAT score of the incoming class. When preferential admissions rates are altered, admissions numbers must be altered as well to achieve a desired class size; the model predicts that these changes effectively cancel each other out.
ISSN:1941-3432