Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: While the sociological literature has long seen a good deal of well-placed attention on educational attainment, studies of college attainment have largely failed to consider two distinct but crucial steps in the process: application and admission. Further, the important distinction between “elite,” highly competitive institutions and non-elite institutions has been insufficiently attended to. We use data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey to identify variables predicting (a) application to college and (b) admission to college at both the elite and non-elite levels for a cohort of students entering college in the 1990s. We find that selection into the applicant group is the crucial step for most students; students from favored socio-economic and cultural backgrounds are far more likely to apply to college. Once students are selected into the applicant group, cultural capital is an important predictor of admission—particularly at the elite level.