What Data Tell Us About Admissions Officers’ Perception of Merit and Equity

• In Event: Assessing Student Learning, Performance, and Success

Abstract

Focusing on the role of admissions officers, this study explores the concept of merit and equity reflected in admissions officers’ definition of holistic review. We propose computational techniques to examine open-ended responses from a unique national sample of admissions officers at selective institutions. Using a Latent Dirichlet Allocation for discovering a set of latent topics that generate a text, this study examines the extent to which the latent topics of holistic review are systematically related to respondents’ characteristics and their practice evaluating standardized test scores. Our findings show variation in latent topics of holistic review across selectivity tiers. Given the stronger effect of selectivity on contextual assessment of test scores, our findings imply that college admissions processes as institutional practices.

Authors

• SuYeong Sophie Shin, Kyungpook National University

• Tyler McDaniel, Stanford University

• Nicholas A. Bowman, University of Iowa

• Michael Bastedo, University of Michigan