Applying for Higher Education from Shanghai International Schools: Information Sources, Key Factors, and the Consideration Process

Abstract

Higher education, or studying in colleges or universities, has begun to offer an increasing range of choices for high school students around the world. A common consequence of this greater range is the more nuanced process of collecting, reviewing, and assessing different information sources on schools and locations, along with a multifaceted decision-making process that involves a myriad of factors, ranging from living environments to teaching quality. This study focuses on examining these processes for students from an international school in Shanghai, China. Students from the school were interviewed, and their data was processed through interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) and thematic analysis. Participants discussed topics such as their intended study directions, trusted and untrusted information sources, and the key factors that influenced their final decisions as to where to study. The results of this study concluded that while students tended to rely on professional counselors or experienced peers for information on schools' subjective traits like culture and values, their evaluation of information sources was not completely fact-based and showed signs of confirmation bias. Moreover, this investigation also found that students often took the living environments of schools and their respective geographic locations as significant factors of consideration, and they did so largely due to negative past experiences related to such factors. Ultimately, this study provided newfound insights into the complex mechanisms behind an increasingly ubiquitous occurrence of high school students' pursuit of higher education in the global context.