Identifying barriers in university admissions of students with excellent academic results

What is your research about?

This research aims at identifying and documenting barriers for 'middle class' students with excellent academic results to gain entry into an undergraduate programme at an elite institution. To achieve this aim, this research will take advantage of granular data recorded by staff assessing students' applications, which are not available in publicly available databases.

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How did the Stone Centre grant help your research?

The Stone Centre grant will help this research by providing funds to hire a Research Assistant, who will help with:

• linking admissions records with students' academic results at university,
• cleaning data and analysing it,
• simulating alternative admission rules.

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What will you produce as part of your research?

We will write two working papers.

• One paper will analyse whether the quality of the personal statement and teacher's references predict better academic results at university.
• The other paper will scrutinise the practice in UK universities of making offers conditional on the minimum entry requirement, rather than on the grade which was precidec by teachers.

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About this grant

Title of the project: Identifying barriers in university admissions of students with excellent academic results

Value of the grant: £15,800

Duration: November 2022 – ongoing

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