The Influence of Late Registration on the Academic Performance of College-Ready Students

The majority of past studies have suggested that late registration has a negative impact on student success and/or academic performance (Smith, Street & Olivarez, 2002). The data from a small sized, rural two-year technical college with open door and rolling admission policies was considered, and this paper confirmed that late registration was one of the important factors to predicting student success using logistic regression models. In this college, the general consensus has been gradually made that late registrants tend to struggle with their first semester credit completion, an essential requirement to receiving financial aid. A linear regression with robust standard errors was employed, and the current study examined how student first semester completion rates were affected based on a various combination of late registration (early vs. late), college ready (underprepared vs. ready) and success status (unsuccessful vs. successful). The effect of late registration on the credit completion rate was only observed in the college-ready student group. This college tends to focus its retention and/or success efforts on underprepared students; however, the result of this study suggests that the college also needs to focus on college-ready late registrants as well.