Large parts of the book that underpins this symposium rightly focus on the challenge of different groups in society accessing any form of higher education at different rates and the causes for such differences: there is a strong focus on the persistent link between social origin and attainment in education and differential transition rates and the social, economic, and cultural causes underlying it. In contrast, this presentation only looks at admission to one of the internationally most highly ranked US and UK universities where applications by far outstrip the supply of available places. This group includes universities like Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, Edinburgh and University College London. The challenge of admission here is not so much that students who are not admitted to one of these institutions will fail to gain any place for study in higher education. To be roughly in the ballpark to even apply to these universities, applicants generally have an attainment record that makes them eligible for admission at a wide range of institutions. Instead, admission and access to elite institutions raises the question of what type of higher education different social groups can access and also of whether and how these universities select new undergraduates in a social context of inequality. The presentation introduces and describes the idea of Holistic and Contextual Admissions (HaCA), why it is used, who benefits and then discusses criticisms and limitations of HaCA. It concludes that HaCA can enhance enrolment in highly selective higher education for disadvantaged groups. To realise its full potential, however, HaCA needs to be part of an integrated approach that encompasses support and outreach prior to higher education and continues throughout students’ progression within higher education into further study and employment. In using HaCA, it seems prudent for policy makers and practitioners to bear in mind the context that gives rise to the need for HaCA in the first place and to keep a focus on the meta-stories of social inequalities while making useful practical changes to make elite admissions more accessible to a wider range of applicants. The workis based on a wider exploration of admissions issues in England and the US (Mountford Zimdars 2016) and a UK national report on contextual admissions (Moore et al. 2013).
