TY  - INPR
A1  - McGrath, S
A1  - Rogers, L
Y1  - 2021/03/08/
N2  - Less-advantaged students are under-represented at prestigious universities, but can we infer that they actively avoid them? This research measured university applicants? knowledge of 115 UK universities. Using card-sort tasks within an interview format, 56 Year 13 students from different types of 16?19 education described how they chose five courses for their application form. Significant cross-cohort trends in knowledge and understanding demonstrated the influence of different educational environments, but within-cohort variation showed that applicant characteristics could over-ride environmental factors. The only cohort where every student understood relative status was an independent school providing individual, career-focused guidance. Limited resources in state-sector schools and colleges necessitated ?opt-in? models of guidance, meaning that only highly motivated students were well-informed. When students knew that universities are ranked by national league tables, this informed their decision-making strategy, but reliance on word-of-mouth rather than fact-based information resulted in some students over-estimating status and graduate outcomes. A new conceptual framework blending developmental and cognitive psychology explained persistent class-based progression trends whilst demonstrating how personal agency or educational interventions enabled some less-advantaged students to enter prestigious universities. There was no evidence that prestigious universities were actively avoided, but some students had insufficient knowledge or understanding to make status-based distinctions.
JF  - British Educational Research Journal
AV  - public
ID  - discovery10124627
N1  - © 2021 The Authors. British Educational Research Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational Research Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
TI  - Do less-advantaged students avoid prestigious universities? An applicant-centred approach to understanding UCAS decision-making
KW  - educational barriers
KW  -  progression and transition
KW  -  social justice
KW  -  UCAS decision?making
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3710
ER  -