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This article applies neoinstitutional organization theory to uncover the central role of university officials in institutionalizing aggressive, race-based affirmative admissions procedures at three selective public universities from the late 1970s until the early 1990s. During this second stage of affirmative action, admissions and diversity officials at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Wisconsin—Madison began to increasingly emphasize the diversity rationale and the method of individualized review. At a time of increasing judicial and executive scrutiny and skepticism of affirmative action, university officials defended and transformed race-conscious admissions in innovative ways when they could have instead chosen to contribute to its demise.

This article applies neoinstitutional organization theory to uncover the central role of university officials in institutionalizing aggressive, race-based affirmative admissions procedures at three selective public universities from the late 1970s until the early 1990s. During this second stage of affirmative action, admissions and diversity officials at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison began to increasingly emphasize the diversity rationale and the method of individualized review. At a time of increasing judicial and executive scrutiny and skepticism of affirmative action, university officials defended and transformed race-conscious admissions in innovative ways when they could have instead chosen to contribute to its demise. Adapted from the source document.

Elite university admissions are administered by a range of organizational actors depending on national and institutional contexts. While the outcomes of high-stakes elite university admissions have been studied extensively, the opaque admissions selection process remains undertheorized and understood. Using theories of professions and systems theory to examine unique qualitative interview data from admissions selectors in both the U.S. and England, this paper sheds light on the opaque decision-making of elite university admissions shaped by professional contexts and organizational dynamics. We find that the self-regulated profession of professors and the less autonomous professional staff selectors influence the decision-making processes of elite university admissions. Understanding elite university admissions based on the macro/meso-context of professions and their organizational system structure offers a theoretically original approach for future research and the potential to create more equitable admissions processes through new change strategies.

We investigate the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse for university admissions (ZVS) in medicine and related subjects. This mechanism consists of three procedures based on final grades from school ("Abiturbestenverfahren", "Auswahlverfahren der Hochschulen") and on waiting time ("Wartezeitverfahren"). While these procedures differ in the criteria applied for admission they all make use of priority matching. In priority matching schemes, it is not a dominant strategy for students to submit their true preferences. Thus, strategic behaviour is expected. Using the full data set of applicants, we are able to detect some amount of strategic behaviour which can lead to inefficient matching. Alternative ways to organize the market are briefly discussed. -- Matching ; university admissions ; strategic behaviour

Previous research suggests that beliefs about inequality are often biased in ways that serve people's own interests. By contrast, people might uphold system-justifying beliefs, such as meritocratic beliefs. We test these assumptions against real-life experience of highly selective university admission. Using panel data on German medical school applicants allows us to measure belief changes through experiences of success or failure in admission. We find support that self-serving bias in beliefs outweighs the motivation for system justification: success strengthens the belief that admission depends on effort, while failure reinforces the belief that admission depends on luck. These patterns partly manifest themselves in beliefs about societal inequality. Additionally, we argue that previous experiences (long-term experiences of social upbringing and short-term experiences in university admissions) provide a frame for new experiences, examine respective effect heterogeneity, and discuss implications of our findings of diverging paths in inequality beliefs of winners and losers for the persistence of inequality.

Abstract
Matching university places to students is not as clear cut or as straightforward as it ought to be. By investigating the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse for university admissions in medicine and related subjects, we show that a procedure designed to give an advantage to students with excellent school grades actually harms them. The reason is that the three-step process employed by the clearinghouse is a complicated mechanism in which many students fail to grasp the strategic aspects involved. The mechanism is based on quotas and consists of three procedures that are administered sequentially, one for each quota. Using the complete data set of the central clearinghouse, we show that the matching can be improved for around 20% of the excellent students while making a relatively small percentage of all other students worse off.

This paper depicts adaptation of expert systems technology using fuzzy logic to handle qualitative and uncertain facts in the decision making process. Over the years, performance evaluations of students are based on qualitative facts, which are now becoming numerically inestimable as a result of uncertainty factors. Through fuzzy logic the qualitative terms like; low, medium and high; low, moderate and high were numerically weighted during the final decision making on students' performance. The key parameters were given weights according to their priorities through mapping of numeric results from uncertain knowledge. Mathematical formulae were applied to calculate the numeric results at the final stage. In this way, the developed fuzzy expert system was demonstrated to be an effective tool for evaluating the performances of candidates seeking for admission into Nigeria tertiary institutions. This may also be adopted as a useful tool by stakeholders in government and Industry to predict the standard and long term expectations in the nation-building enterprise.