An Exploration of Admissions-Related Practices from Institutions’ Admissions Web Pages and Implications for Equity

Harrison Kell, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Scientist in the Center for Education and Career Development at Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, New Jersey. Dr. Kell’s expertise lies in the assessment of cognitive (e.g., verbal and mathematical reasoning) and noncognitive skills (e.g., intercultural relations, personality traits). He has developed assessments relevant to student admissions and personnel selection (e.g., situational judgment tests [SJTs]), performance evaluation (e.g., behaviorally anchored rating scales [BARS]), and performance improvement (e.g., feedback interventions). He serves as a content expert for the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) program. Dr. Kell has published articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Psychological Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and chapters in multiple edited volumes (e.g., APA Handbook of Career Intervention, The Science of Expertise). His practical research interests concern the relationship between relatively stable human attributes (e.g., personality traits, cognitive skills) and human performance, broadly construed (e.g., career success, creativity, job tenure and retention). Dr. Kell’s theoretical research interests lie in strengthening the soundness of interpretations of those attributes, in order to improve the validity and fairness of decisions based upon them (e.g., admissions, development, selection). Dr. Kell received his Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology in 2011 from Rice University and was a postdoctoral fellow in the quantitative methods program at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University from 2011 to 2014.

Guangming Ling, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Education and Career Development at ETS, Research and Measurement Science area. His research focuses on the assessment and training of critical competencies in higher ed and the workforce, as well as a broad range of topics in applied measurements, such as test validity and fairness issues, higher education learning outcomes assessment, rating issues with constructed responses, test mode effects, computerized adaptive testing, an application of latent variable models. Dr. Ling’s research has appeared in more than 40 peer-reviewed journal papers, book chapters, research reports, and more than 80 conference presentations. Dr. Ling holds a Ph.D. in psychometrics/quantitative psychology from Fordham University.