Key Indicators of College Success: Predicting College Enrollment, Persistence, and Graduation

[Slides] presented at AERA in Denver, CO in April 2010. In today's education climate, an enormous amount of pressure has been placed on states, school districts, and programs to produce graduates who are prepared to successfully enter, persist through, and graduate from the nation's universities and colleges. However, much of this research has been limited to one school or has focused on publicly available variables, thus limiting the analyses' generalizability and relevance. This study investigates the power of various student-level background and academic variables as well as school-level social and academic characteristics in the prediction of college enrollment, persistence, and graduation, demonstrating that characteristics at both levels play a role in the likelihood of reaching these goals. By creating this prediction model, researchers hope to further the field's understanding of the impact that a student's high school experience has on his or her likelihood of successfully navigating through college immediately following high school graduation.