Changes to College Admissions Standards

• Twenty-eight states have adopted statewide admission requirements. In six additional states, there is some system- or state-level involvement in setting admissions policies.

• Much of this activity began in the 1980s, largely in response to concerns about underpreparation of high school students for college.

• The most common approach is to establish required high school coursework units for college admission. Thirty-one of the 34 states and systems involved are using this approach.

• In addition to coursework requirements, many states use "performance criteria" for admissions -- ACT/SAT test scores, high school GPA, and high school class rank. In 19 states, students are given options in the form of admissions indices, sliding scales, or choices among criteria so that poor performance on one measure does not preclude admission to college.

• Even with statewide policies, admissions requirements may vary at different colleges in a state.

• State policy may determine that certain institutions, sectors, or systems remain more selective in admissions while others admit students with lower high school performance. (That is, state policy sets "cutoff" points that vary by sector, system, and/or institution.)

• Institutions frequently retain authority to set more restrictive requirements within the state framework. This typically occurs for the more selective institutions, but it may include specific schools, programs, or majors within the same institution.

• The development of competency-based admissions appeared in the 1990s, largely motivated by K-12 school reform efforts. In nearly all cases, competency-based admissions will not replace traditional approaches, but will provide alternatives for students in nontraditional high schools and programs.

• States have used a number of approaches to help balance the need for higher admissions standards with the need to maintain broad access to postsecondary education. These include relatively open access to community colleges; allowing some students to be admitted to four-year institutions when they do not meet stated admission requirements; accepting applied or tech prep courses toward college admission; accepting learning experiences that occur outside the regular classroom; and admitting "adult" students without their meeting regular admissions criteria.

• The trend is toward more stringent admission requirements, especially in the form of required coursework, while also providing more alternative admission options for students.

• Many states have programs to raise the level of student preparation. Common approaches are early outreach programs, information sent to middle and high school students, allowing high school students to take college courses for credit, feedback to high schools on how their graduates perform in college, and bringing high school and college faculty together to work on curriculum and standards.

• A number of states are conducting research on postsecondary remediation. State-level address whether remedial coursework counts toward full-time status for financial aid purposes (it normally does) and whether it counts toward graduation requirements (it normally does not), limiting sectors or institutions in their remedial offerings (typically moved away from more selective institutions), how funding is provided or restricted, and regulating when or how students participate in remedial coursework.

• Over 30 states collect some data to evaluate the effectiveness of statewide admission policies, student preparation programs, and/or remediation policies. However, many of these are routine data collection efforts that do not involve in-depth research or evaluation.

• About 15 states use incentive funding or competitive grant approaches to improve student preparation.

• State personnel generally believe that their policies and programs are having a positive impact on student preparation for college.

 The full report is available from SHEEO.