Designing and validating a college readiness test addresses the absence of standardized Philippine-based College Readiness Test (CRT) congruent with the College Readiness Standards (CRS) set by the Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED). It also resolves the varied and arbitrary indices used by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to measure the preparedness of K to 12 Filipino graduates to enter college. In this regard, this study establishes the validity and reliability of the CRT to measure the combination of knowledge, skills, and reflective thinking necessary for the K to 12 graduates to be admitted and to succeed without remediation in the General Education courses in HEIs. Using multi-stage sampling in a select province of the Philippines and with due consideration of the district, type of school, and academic tracks offered in senior high school, the study has generated that the 200-item CRT has desirable difficulty index (65.64), reasonably good discrimination index (0.22), and large functioning distractors (68.91% distractor efficiency). Notably, there is a significant positive relationship between discrimination and difficulty indices as well as the distractor efficiency and difficulty index of the CRT items. Also, the CRT is reliable as it possesses inter-item consistency (r=0.796). Thus, it is a valid and reliable instrument to measure the college readiness of Filipino K to 12 graduates with its features of being contextualized, gender-fair, and criterion-referenced.

<span>Guided by the lens of Bourdieu, this study examined the relationship of the students' economic capital (parents' monthly income and students' weekly allowance) and cultural capital (parents' highest educational attainment and students' community involvement) to their college readiness. The study utilized a descriptive-correlational design, and data were collected from 6,626 K-12 graduates enrolled in one state-university in Cagayan Valley Region, Philippines. The results reveal that the respondents have parents who have income below the Philippine poverty threshold level and have obtained a secondary level of education. They, too, are college-unready, implying that the competencies they obtained from their basic education need further enhancement. Moreover, economic and cultural capital becomes significant resources that are valuable in explaining the college readiness of Filipino Senior High School (SHS) graduates. Those who come from families with higher economic and cultural capital tend to have higher college readiness. Remarkably, the low economic and cultural capital of the students possibly explains their lack of college readiness. As they have less economic and cultural capital, they tend to have fewer competencies to capacitate them in hurdling tertiary education. Hence, these disadvantaged students generally struggle to achieve more and to be successful in life</span><span lang="IN">.</span>

This study challenges the basic assumption that college readiness is accounted to senior high school (SHS) graduates’ cognitive abilities. It proffers that certain non-cognitive personality traits like grit may influence the college readiness of SHS graduates in a non-Western context. The study used descriptive-correlation design to examine the relationship between grit and college readiness of 7,533 K-12 graduates enrolled in one public university in the north-eastern part of the Philippines. The results reveal that K-12 graduates admitted in the respondent-university are “mostly gritty,” and a more significant proportion of them are college-unready. The students' grittiness is exemplified in the Filipinos' grit-related concepts such as sigasig (persistence of effort) and tiyaga (constancy in work) that are pursued because of their concept of “relational self.” The test of the relationship shows that grit has a positive influence on the college readiness of SHS graduates. This finding proves that cognitive traits may not be a good factor in making SHS graduates admitted and successful in college. Essentially, some non-cognitive traits like grit are as vital as intellectual abilities in influencing college readiness. Given these results, it is imperative that educators and school administrators of the K-12 program need to develop further not only the intellectual abilities of the students under their care but also to give equal emphasis and development among elementary and secondary students as it is a valid and essential personal trait to better prepare them for a college education.

The graduation of the first two batches of the Filipino senior high school (postsecondary) graduates calls for an examination of their college readiness since admission to tertiary education is one of the curricular exits of the K to 12 Program. Using the College Readiness Test (CRT) as a criterion-referenced measure, this study determined the college readiness of the K to 12 graduates based on the overall CRT results and specifically in its seven (7) learning areas namely English, Filipino, Literature, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and Humanities, which ought to be mastered in the K to 12 Program. The test of concurrent validity has proven that the CRT is a credible measure of college readiness in these learning areas. It has also ascertained this concurrent validity of the CRT in relation to a College Admission Test (CAT), which is a norm-referenced test that measures the college readiness of K to 12 graduates admitted in one public university in the northeastern part of the Philippines. As a descriptive-correlational research and using 7,533 K to 12 graduates as respondents, it was found that overall, the K to 12 graduates were college-unready. They poorly performed in Science and Mathematics but manifested college readiness with languages and literature. Also, campus assignment plays a significant variable in explaining the differentials in the college readiness of the respondents. On the whole, the study offers manifold benefits for policy reforms along curriculum alignment, tertiary admissions, and transition interventions to improve the quality of the K to 12 graduates. Contribution/Originality: This study is one of the first attempts to document the college readiness of Filipino K to 12 graduates as a response to the call of the Philippine Congress to examine the quality of the K to 12 graduates. This study is going to be an input for policy formulation among DepEd, CHED and HEIs along instructional delivery, curricular reforms, college admissions and retention, and intervention measures. 1. INTRODUCTION College readiness generally refers to the ability of the high school graduates to be admitted to college and to succeed in foundation courses without remediation. It focuses on the knowledge and skills essential to successfully pursue college (Baber, Zamani-Gallaher, Stevenson, & Porter, 2019). In fact, it is an evolving educational concept with the following takeaways. First, it has been understood in diverse contexts such as, "best practices" and

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