Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, March, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

This study aims to develop a method for more clearly understanding the topics that applicants choose when writing their college or university application essay. As such, the purpose of this dissertation is two-fold. First, to analyze the unstudied volume of advice and guidance available to applicants on the World Wide Web, this study will analyze the guidance that is available to motivate and guide applicants as they embark on writing their essay. Second, this study examines the college application essay and will create a categorization of the application essay topics on which a select group of applicants chose to write. The purpose is not to evaluate the applicant or their demographics, nor is it to suggest “best practices” for college applicants to follow when writing their essays. Furthermore, as an examination of popular media and of narrative expression, this analysis does not attempt to reveal a causal link between media and the resulting narratives. Instead, this inductive analysis develops a baseline theory that begins a discussion of the application essay and the multitude of information that might guide its creation. The motivation for this study is grounded in the following: 1) many colleges and universities employ selective practices in their admissions process and they consider the application essay to be a helpful tool in selecting from among otherwise academically eligible students; 2) applicants consider the essay to be one of the most challenging and unfamiliar aspects of the application; and 3) a multi-million-dollar industry has developed to assist students with college and university applications. This research supports prior studies that indicate that the writing of college application essays (or personal statements) is in fact as Paley (1996) suggests an exercise in a rhetorical conundrum. Applicants emerge from the angst and confusion of how to approach and what to write about in their college application essay to produce a work that reveals personal characteristics that they think are important to college admissions officers and that they hope, will ultimately, result in admission to their institution of choice. / text

The purpose of this study were to research the Decision-making Process of Oversea Chinese Students in College Applications , and hope to forward conclusions and suggestions according to the results. Based on the motivations , it can be categorized into three purpose : 1.to borrow from the theoretical framework and techniques from the education marketing, aims to enhance the marketing capacity of Taiwan¡¦s universities in recruiting oversea Chinese students. 2.to analysis the selection criteria of Oversea Chinese Students in College Applications, the main sources of foreign university information, and the most important person influencing the Decision-making Process of Oversea Chinese Students in College Applications. 3.according to the results, constructive suggestions to the administration, the universities and colleges, serving as a reference in the management of enrollment strategies. The achieve the aims mentioned above, the research starts from the exploring the theories of market segmentation and marketing strategies through related papers and articles, then collect empirical studies about the college-student recruitment. Based upon the result of literature review, a¡§Questionnaire of Influential Factors concerning the Decision-making Process of Oversea Chinese Students Seeking College Education¡¨ were developed. About eight hundred students in National Oversea Chinese Student University Preparatory School were surveyed using the questionnaire above. A series of statistics such as descriptive statistics, Chi-square test, cluster analysis, ANOVA, and MANOVA were conducted to analyze the data collected. The main discoveries are as follows : 1.Different background variable make a lot of difference in the Decision-making Process in College Applications. 2.Different background variable make a lot of difference within the four cluster Oversea Chinese Students. 3.Different cluster Oversea Chinese Students have their own inclination in the Decision-making Process in College Applications. 4.Different cluster Oversea Chinese Students have their own inclination in the university information sources. With the coming short of college students due to the sharp decrease of birth rate in Taiwan, recruitment officials of colleges and universities are anxious of the future and figuring out the strategies to admit oversea Chinese students from the Southeastern Asia. The conclusions of this study can provide a clear picture of future oversea Chinese students for international colleges and universities.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Toronto, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-06, Section: A, page: 2410. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 232-244).

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / In South Africa there is a fierce competition among Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to attract as many students as possible. This makes most institutions to strive to meet and exceed students (customer) satisfaction. Most institutions strive to meet and exceed customers’ (students) expectations similar to business organisations. It however remains to be investigated if they do succeed in this goal. The purpose of this study was to explore students’ and staff members’ perceptions in regards to customer satisfaction and the level of efficiencies during the registration process at the Business and Management Sciences Faculty at CPUT. This study measures if the registration processes is aligned with students’ needs.

This quantitative study investigated relationships among and between university early and late admitted freshmen and academic performance and persistence. The participants in this study consisted of 3,197 early freshmen applicants and 309 late freshmen applicants admitted at a large southwestern student centered public research university over the course of the year prior to the fall 2008 academic year. Significant results, using a statistical significance level of p < .05, were reported for the majority of variables examined: chi-square analysis revealed a significant relationship between application date and ethnicity; independent-samples t-tests revealed significant differences in SAT scores; 78.06% of late applicants were male compared to 40.83% of early applicants; mean GPA of early applicants was 2.62 compared to 2.18 among those who applied late; and lastly, 76.62% of early applicants returned the following year in comparison to 57.42% of late applicants. The results of this study provide preliminary support for the examination of admission policies and procedures in relation to late application. Recommendations are made for advising, counseling, and other interventions that may ease the transition of freshmen late applicants while enhancing retention and persistence.

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the impact of large-scale education policies changing high school duration in a sub-Saharan Africa context, specifically Ghana. These policies vary critical factors, namely instruction time and age at test, competition, and incentives to enroll in high school, which have implications for educational and labor market outcomes. I exploit these exogenous time series variations created to study impacts on learning, college application decisions, educational attainment, and labor market outcomes. A common thread across chapters is the examination of differential impact by gender or socio-economic vulnerability. In Chapter 1, I interrogate a nationwide reform in Ghana that reduced curricular pace by extending high school duration by a year without changing the breadth of the curriculum and the grade structure at lower levels of schooling. Maintaining the curriculum while increasing duration was aimed at reducing the curricular pace to one more suited to students' learning pace. This is key because, despite enormous strides in increasing school enrollment in developing countries, widespread low and stagnant learning outcomes remain a concern for policymakers and an active line of inquiry for researchers. Exploiting time-series variation from this quasi-random experiment, I implement a cohort analysis and a regression discontinuity design that leverages a compulsory school start law to examine the impact on learning at the end of high school, collegiate attainment, and labor market outcomes. I find significant positive effects on learning, with females benefiting more. Varying impact sizes across baseline ability levels suggest an extreme curricular gap in this setting. This reform has some positive impact on the decision to apply to college. Furthermore, young individuals who gain from increasing the depth of human capital but do not further their education beyond high school are more likely to be engaged in paid employment outside their household, although males drive these gains. I continue to investigate this setting in Chapter 2 by examining another nationwide reform that reduced high school duration by a year, three years after it was increased. This removal resulted in two cohorts graduating high school at the same time - the last before the removal of the extra year and the first after the removal. An immediate implication is a sharp increase in the number of students who graduated high school and could apply to university in a given year, exogenously increasing graduating cohort size. A larger high school graduating cohort size may affect human capital formation by impacting accumulated knowledge at the end of high school and collegiate attainment. Fewer high school resources per student and changes in student effort are possible mechanisms through which this cohort size can affect knowledge accumulation. On the college education market, a larger graduating cohort may signal a fall in admission probability through increased college demand if there is no expected commensurate increase in supply. In response, students may change their application strategy on the extensive and intensive margin depending on their revised admission probability estimate. I test these hypotheses by combining a cohort analysis and a regression discontinuity design leveraging a compulsory schooling law to isolate causal effects. Focusing on students with the extra year, I find a notable fall in end-of-high school performance for students who faced a larger cohort. These individuals are less likely to obtain a college degree. First, they are less likely to apply immediately after graduation, which persists for two years, suggesting many forgo applications altogether. Even when they do, universities face supply constraints and cannot absorb the increased demand. Second, they reduce the selectivity of their applications' field choices. Analogous results hold for females and economically vulnerable students. In Chapter 3, I assess a possible tradeoff between increased years of schooling and the likelihood of graduating high school in a setting where high school is neither free nor compulsory from the nationwide policy considered in Chapter 1 that increased high school duration by a year. This policy creates an exogenous shock to high school duration for the universe of middle school graduates at this transition point. Bunching in the number of students who complete the highest grade of a schooling level and then drop out is a common phenomenon. It suggests factors that change incentives to enroll at the next level may affect their continuation decisions. Using a multiple linear regression model with fixed effects to estimate the impact from this exogenous shock, I find that those who expect to be affected by the policy spend more years in pre-tertiary schooling, but this comes at a statistical and economically significant cost to graduating. This finding aligns with policymakers' concerns that some students would be precluded from obtaining a high school education. It is worth noting that sub-groups in the population who may be disadvantaged - females, students from low socio-economic backgrounds, and lower ability students are not more likely to bear the brunt. If anything, they have significantly lower costs.

This time of great change, of shifting paradigms, provides a great platform for universities to rethink their processes (Duderstadt, 2000). Thanks to the pioneering success of the Toyota Motor Company for the invention of lean manufacturing. This operating system has been implemented in many manufacturing companies, with recent successes reported in the service industry. With its focus on quality improvement, cost reduction, efficiency and excellency, lean has been recognised as one of the mechanisms for process improvement and organisational change. In terms of fully embracing lean principles, the service industry still lags far behind the manufacturing, with institutions of higher learning still quite far. Numerous authors have confirmed that institutions of learning are not an easy environment to change. Universities are still characterised by bureaucratic systems based on conventional processes that are not necessarily relevant to today‘s world. The old saying that change in the universities occur one grave at a time is not farfetched (Hines and Lethbridge, 2008 and Paul and Brindley, 1996). The impact of globalisation on business education and how to respond to this phenomenon is a challenge. This necessitates a need for more streamlined and efficient organisations; hence lean has been promoted as a strategy to achieve competitive advantage (Simmons and Masson, 2003). The research study aims to identify areas where lean principles can be implemented to improve the NMMU MBA application process. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees directly involved in the process in order to understand it better. The results of the respondents were reported in a process chart diagram and spaghetti diagram. The interviews also revealed five themes that emerged during the analysis of responses. These themes formed the basis for development of recommendations in Chapter 6 of the study.