Contextualized High School Performance - Evidence to Inform Equitable Holistic, Test-Optional, and Test-Free Admissions Policies

Oct 15, 2026

Holistic college admissions require evaluating applicants’ credentials in light of the opportunities available in their high school context. Using a unique dataset of 2.3 million students from a Midwestern state, the study examines whether contextualized indicators of high school performance predict college success. Contextualized high school grades and standardized test scores both show strong associations with college outcomes, with contextualized grades more consistently related to success, informing equitable holistic, test-optional, and test-free policy design.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Contextualized indicators and college success

How holistic review practices vary across institutions

Implications for equitable admissions policies

AERA Open January-December 2023, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 1–19 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584231197413 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2023. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Contextualized High School Performance: Evidence to Inform Equitable Holistic, Test-Optional, and Test-Free Admissions Policies Michael N. Bastedo University of Michigan Mark Umbricht University of North Carolina Emma Bausch Bo-Kyung Byun Yiping Bai University of Michigan Holistic admissions practices require evaluating an applicant’s credentials in light of the opportunities available in their highschool context. High school grades, test scores, and course taking are clearly related to college grades, retention, and graduation. But does performance in high school context also relate to college success? Building a unique dataset of 2.3 million students in a Midwestern state, we find that contextualized indicators of high school grades and standardized tests are strongly associated with student success in college, validating their use in holistic admissions. Contextualized grades have a stronger and more consistent association with college success than contextualized test scores, and may be most helpful attest-optional, test-free, and broader-access colleges that have yet to adopt holistic admissions practices. Keywords: college admissions, decision making, equity, higher education, measurements, regression analyses, standardized tests, student success Higher education is a crucial driver of upward social mobility. Without a college degree, students from the lowest quintile of the national income distribution have a 45% chance of staying at the bottom, and a mere 5% chance of moving to the top quintile; with a college degree, similar students enjoy a 50% increase in the chances of moving out of the bottom quintile, and a four-time increase in chances of rising to the top quintile (Isaacs et al., 2008) . Yet, access to high-quality higher education remains highly stratified along socioeconomic lines (Bastedo & Jaquette, 2011; Dynarski et al., 2021) . Researchers frequently describe the undergraduate admissions practices of selective colleges as a “black box”(Rubin & González Canché, 2019) . At once, this label captures not only the classified nature of what occurs behind closed doors, but also the ambiguity of holistic review criteria and its associated gatekeeping practices (Rosinger et al., 2021) . Indeed, although some form of holistic review is near-ubiquitous throughout the selective admissions sector (Coleman & Keith, 2018; Lucido, 2015), its application varies within and across institutions; evidence suggests that while some admissions officers account for the opportunities an applicant has in their high school and neighborhood—which constitutes holistic review in its purest form (Coleman & Keith, 2018)—others simply read an applicant’s whole file (Bastedo et al., 2018) . However, admissions officers who evaluate an applicant based on measures of “contextualized” high school performance as opposed to “raw” performance—for example, by considering an applicant’s grade-point average (GPA) and standardized test scores in relation to others at their highschool—are more likely to admit low-SES students (Bastedo & Bowman, 2017; Bastedo et al., 2018). Given that the proportion of low-income students at selective colleges has not increased since the 1970s (Bastedo & Jaquette, 2011), growth among students of color remains stagnant (Posselt et al., 2012), and degrees from highly selective colleges serve as agents of social mobility for those from low-SES backgrounds (Chetty et al., 2020; Dale & Krueger, 2014), this is welcome news. Evaluating student achievement in context aims to level the playing field among different applicants, who are coming from starkly different high schools, nei

FAQs

What question does the study investigate about high school performance?

It asks whether performance in a student’s high school context predicts success in college, beyond simple links between raw grades, test scores, and college outcomes.

How does contextualized grading compare with contextualized test scores?

It suggests contextualized holistic review can make admissions more equitable by accounting for differing resource levels, avoiding penalties for students from lower-resourced backgrounds, and identifying highly talented students likely to thrive in college.

Why is contextualized review not widely adopted?

The text indicates limited adoption may stem from an undeveloped evidence base on how contextualized performance relates to college outcomes and from insufficient high school information to enable appropriate contextualization.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by eBook King