Gaps in the College Application Gauntlet

Brian Holzman (), Daniel Klasik and Rachel Baker
Additional contact information
Brian Holzman: Rice University
Daniel Klasik: The George Washington University
Rachel Baker: University of California – Irvine

Research in Higher Education, 2020, vol. 61, issue 7, No 1, 795-822

Abstract: Abstract A large literature in higher education research has focused on disparities in rates of successful completion of the various steps along the path that leads to college enrollment (e.g. completing a college preparatory curriculum, taking the SAT or ACT, applying to a college) as an important source of inequitable college attainment between groups of students. In this study, we extend this prior work by explicitly examining race- and income-based gaps in these steps to college enrollment. Drawing on national- and state-representative samples from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, we use the V-statistic to calculate race- and income-based gaps in the completion of these steps. We have three main findings. First, we demonstrate that gaps calculated using the V-statistic method differ from gaps calculated using more traditional approaches leading to a new understanding of the size of these gaps. Second, among the steps we analyze, it appears that gaps in academic qualifications are large and similar in size to gaps in college application, admission, and enrollment. Finally, through regression analysis, we show that gaps in academic qualifications and gaps in taking a college entrance exam are the strongest predictors of gaps in the selectivity of eventual enrollment. Policymakers and practitioners interested in closing college enrollment gaps ought to identify interventions that specifically aim to address gaps identified by our analysis early in the postsecondary pathway.

Keywords: Steps to college enrollment; Race and income gaps; Higher education equity; Ordinal statistics; High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11162-019-09566-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:reihed:v:61:y:2020:i:7:d:10.1007_s11162-019-09566-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11162

DOI: 10.1007/s11162-019-09566-8

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Higher Education is currently edited by Robert K. Toutkoushian

More articles in Research in Higher Education from Springer, Association for Institutional Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().