Abstract
The match between a student’s academic ability and the academic ability of the student’s peers has been found to exert influence on student educational aspirations. Research on this has garnered mixed results with some finding that students whose peers have higher ability are more likely to develop a poor self-concept and lower their academic aspirations and others finding the opposite, that more able peer increase motivation and aspirations overall. While the effects of peer and student ability match on the educational aspirations of elementary and secondary students have received attention in recent years, these effects have largely been neglected in postsecondary education. In this study, I use recent postsecondary student data to see how the difference between the student’s SAT score and the mean institutional SAT affects the likelihood of the student experiencing a decrease in educational aspirations post college entry. Findings indicate that students whose scores are below the mean institutional SAT and who are attending less selective institutions are more likely to experience a decrease in future educational aspirations post college entry than students whose SAT scores are above the mean. However, students attending more selective institutions are protected from this effect, likely because of greater selection in admissions at more selective postsecondary institutions.
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Notes
The relationship between the effects of peer ability and student ability on student academic confidence and performance has been found at the elementary (see for example Hanushek et al. 2003; Hoxby 2000), middle (see for example Burke and Sass 2006), and high school level (see for example Ream and Rumberger 2008).
Children of alumni make up 10–25 % of the student body at selective institutions. At institutions that explicitly do not give preference to children of alumni that number is 2 % (Kahlenberg 2010).
“African-American applicants receive the equivalent of 230 extra SAT points (on a 1600-point scale), and being Hispanic is worth an additional 185 SAT points. Other things equal, recruited athletes gain an admission bonus worth 200 points, while the preference for legacy candidates is worth 160 points” (Espenshade and Chung 2005, p. 293). According to Espenshade and Chung (2005), there is evidence that students whose SAT score is above 1500 (pre-2006 scale) are also given some preference in that they are able to get in with lower high school grades.
Studies have cited that increasing diversity in learning environment leads to positive outcomes for all students such as being more aware of global and social issues. A diverse learning environment also has a positive effect on minority student achievement and retention (Hurtado and Guillermo-Wann 2013).
Affirmative action in postsecondary education has faced legal scrutiny and has been discontinued in several states: California (1996), Washington (1998), Michigan (2003, affirmative action was not discontinued but a predetermined amount of points cannot be awarded to applicants due to their minority status), Nebraska (2008), Arizona (2010), New Hampshire (2012), and Oklahoma (2012). The fact that affirmative action was discontinued in California and Washington prior to the sampling for the student data used in this study is not a concern as the data is nationally representative and there is evidence of racial preference in admission in all college selectivity tiers.
Hoxy and Weingarth (2005) suggest a similar mechanism, which they name the bad apple/shining light, where one very strong or very poor student can have an effect on the larger group if he exerts influence that is valued by the group. .
Grouping institutions into quartiles explains 85 % of the variation in institutional mean SAT for the postsecondary institutions included. Within quartiles, institutions have considerably similar mean institutional SAT scores, making this kind of categorization an acceptable way of indirectly controlling for institutional mean SAT.
There are additional tests (Advanced Placement (AP) test or SAT Subject Tests) that are standardized and administered nationally but are not mandatory for college applications. Furthermore, these tests are content specific and students choose what subject they want to be tested in. Also, as mentioned above, the ACT is becoming more widely used and has in 2013 caught up to the SAT so that now roughly 51 % of graduating high school students are taking the ACT and 51 % of graduating high school students are taking the SAT. This is likely because Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Wyoming have made ACT testing of high school students mandatory (ACT 2013).
High school grades and SAT scores have a strong (r = 0.49, BPS:96/01) positive correlation. While both play an important part in college admissions, high school grades are numerically not comparable across admitted students within a postsecondary institution. Students apply from a wide variety of high schools with disparate course offerings and academic standards that result in numerically similar grade point averages conveying drastically different information about a student’s ability and preparation (Jencks and Phillips 1998). In the context of college admissions, high school grades are evaluated as a measure of the extent to which students took advantage and excelled within the bounds of the schooling environment they were placed in (Alon and Tienda 2007).
I am aware of two studies that make use of both high school record and SAT scores to determine the extent to which student’s academic credentials match the school’s academic credentials: Roderick et al. (2011), Smith et al. (2013). This method requires rich high school transcript data not available in the dataset used for this study.
An exception to this is Sacerdotes’ (2001) study of Dartmouth students and the affects of having a certain type of roommate on students own behavior.
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Jagešić, S. Student-Peer Ability Match and Declining Educational Aspirations in College. Res High Educ 56, 673–692 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-015-9366-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-015-9366-y