Navigating the Road to College: Race and Class Variation in the College Application Process

Abstract

AbstractCollege attendance brings significant financial gain in lifetime earnings, and in order to reap those benefits more students are attending college than ever before. At the same time as more students have been applying to college, the application process itself has changed dramatically in the last few decades. As the last hurdle on the road to college, the application process is a critical step in the overall college‐choice process. However, until recently much of the research on college choice gave little attention to the actual steps of college application and did not always attend to variations by race and class. Considering the increasing importance of a college education and the consistent inequalities by race and class in who attends college, research examining how social background affects the ways in which students navigate the college application process is crucial. This review examines what we do know about race and class variation in college application, drawing from literature across sociology, economics, and higher education. This review addresses three questions: how does the admissions and application process affect race and class inequalities in college attendance? How have scholars modeled this process and do these models capture the experiences of students across race and class? And finally, how do students from different social backgrounds vary in their approach to applying to college?