Recognizing the Array of College Choices: How College Access Nonprofits Foster Students’ Establishment of Choice Sets

• In Event: 40814 - Education

Abstract

How do students develop college choice sets? From prior research, we know that students want to attend college. We also have a sense of the types of colleges different groups of students apply to and attend. Less is known, however, about how students develop an initial consideration set of colleges and how they narrow their choice sets throughout their college application processes. Focusing on the case of students from systematically marginalized groups, I examine how they establish their choice sets for college and how those choice sets evolve over the course of the application and admissions process. Using data from over a year-long ethnographic and interview study of students and staff at Pathways–L.A. (PLA; a pseudonym), I find that, for low-income, first-generation college student Latinx youth, College Access Nonprofits (CANs)can play a role in shaping their choice sets. One way they do so is by helping students to understand the diversity of college options available. Understanding that diversity helps them to recognize the importance of choice, to get excited about that choice, and also to better map their preferences onto specific schools. PLA fostered students’ development of their choice sets in various ways, including by 1) encouraging and providing college trips and 2) presenting college-related self-reflection opportunities. In the interest of clarity and brevity, I focus on the first of these. I argue that my findings may thereby help to explain why many students from systematically marginalized groups, particularly those who do not participate in CANs, may choose schools that are closer to home or less selective than those to which they might otherwise be expected to apply.

Author

• Madison Felicitas Garcia, University of Wisconsin-Madison