FERPA: Are admissions files included as part of the education record?

The short answer is, yes. They contain personally identifiable information about the student and are maintained by the institution, so they are considered an education record. As such, if a student requests access to his or her admissions file and it hasn't been destroyed (following the University's retention policy) the student has the right to view the information. The one caveat to this is letters of recommendation the student has waived the rights to see, the waiver excludes those records from student review. If the information is still maintained and the student has requested to view it, the record cannot be destroyed at that point even if according to the retention policy it could have been.