High School Classrooms and Black Students’ College Applications
Valerie A. Lewis
Princeton University
And
William J. Carbonaro
University of Notre Dame
ABSTRACT
While the effects of school racial composition on students’ outcomes has been a topic of some
interest for decades, to date there is no good research on how racial composition affects students’
college applications. We test two main theories on the effects of segregation: oppositional culture
and the related “acting white” hypothesis, and perpetuation theory and the contact hypothesis.
Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 and the Integrated
Postsecondary Education Data System we analyze how high school classroom racial composition
affects black students’ subsequent higher education application behavior, looking at effects on
application versus no application at a four-year postsecondary institution, selectivity of colleges
applied to, and racial composition of colleges applied to. We find that high school racial
composition has no effect on whether or not a student applies to a four-year post-secondary
institution nor the selectivity of institutions applied to; high school classroom composition,
however, did have a significant positive effect on application at a predominantly black
university. These results support perpetuation theory and the contact hypothesis while lending no
support to theories of oppositional culture or “acting white.”