About the Report
How to Use This Report
Part 1 of this report focuses on the self-reported college preferences and ACT Educational Opportunity Service (EOS) participation rates of the ACT-tested high school graduating class of 2012.
Part 2 focuses on the college enrollment of these ACT-tested high school graduates and addresses such topics as student mobility, the extent to which students’ college choices match their preferences, and the enrollment rates of students selected through EOS.
This report builds on a foundation of knowledge about the academic readiness of the ACT-tested high school graduating class of 2012 as presented in The Condition of College & Career Readiness. An important conclusion of the Condition report is that far too many high school graduates are not prepared for success in college and career as defined by their attainment of the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks. We encourage you to read through the Condition report to have a better context for interpreting the findings of this report.
A little more than half of the graduating class of 2012 took the ACT® college readiness assessment during high school. Whether you are searching for prospective students locally or in other parts of the country, a better understanding of the preferences and college choice behaviors of ACT-tested students can improve your marketing and recruitment strategies. The information presented in this report and in the accompanying online charts and maps can provide insights to inform discussions on your campus about the desired characteristics and locations of prospective students and your strategies for recruiting them. For those colleges that participate in EOS, the information provided in this report can help you to establish or refine your selection criteria to create more efficient student searches. Over time, this report can also serve as a guide to help you gauge the effectiveness of your search, marketing, and recruitment strategies.
Sources
Part 1 of this report focuses on all ACT-tested high school graduates from the class of 2012. Part 2 of this report focuses on those ACT-tested graduates who subsequently enrolled in a U.S. college. College enrollment for this report is determined by matching the test records of the ACT-tested graduating class with college enrollment records provided to The National Student Clearinghouse®. For the ACT-tested graduating class of 2012, 70% of students were identified by The National Student Clearinghouse as having enrolled in college during fall 2012.
Information in this report—such as the students’ background characteristics, grade level at time of testing, ACT scores, college preferences, and participation in EOS—is collected when students register for and take the ACT. College characteristics are provided by The National Student Clearinghouse and are supplemented by information found in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).