Michael Bastedo speaks with NPR about the role of holistic review in a post-affirmative action admissions landscape

Michael Bastedo spoke with NPR's Elissa Nadworny about findings from his new study, “Contextualized High School Performance: Evidence to Inform Equitable Holistic, Test-Optional, and Test-Free Admissions Policies,” published in AERA Open. Along with Bastedo, the research was conducted by University of Michigan co-authors Emma Bausch, Bo-Kyung Byun and Yiping Bai, all doctoral candidates in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, and Mark Umbricht at the University of North Carolina.

Colleges’ goal of seeking new and legal ways to help build first-year classes that will be diverse and whose members will be successful in the long run has taken on new importance after the Supreme Court banned race-conscious admissions policies. Bastedo’s research shows that looking at a fuller picture of a prospective student—like a high school profile, the neighborhood a student grew up in, and family resources—can be a great predictor of student success when they get to campus.

Bastedo and his team looked at data from more than 2 million high school students and tracked what happened to them in college. Did they stay enrolled after freshman year? How were their grades?

“We found that there was a really solid association between how a student performed in their high school context and their college grades and their college retention and their graduation,” said Bastedo. 

It can be hard, Bastedo told Nadworny, for admissions counselors to trust context or to put aside personal bias, but hopefully this research will provide them confidence in their decision-making process. 

In terms of anticipating retention and grades in college, “You're not taking a big risk when you admit a student who's doing really well in their [high school] context,” said Bastedo.