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Differences Between Latinx and White Students in College-Going Behaviors

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Abstract

Though Latinx students are going to college at an increasing rate, these students are still more likely to attend community college and less prestigious 4-year institutions than other groups. In an effort to understand this pattern, our study investigates how Latinx students prepare for college while in high school. We use nationally representative data to predict how Latinx students differ from White students when engaging in college-going behaviors. We find that, net of controls, Latinx students are less likely to take college entrance exams but submit more applications to college. We also find that increases in parental SES are associated with increases in college-going behaviors for White students, while Latinx students are consistent in engaging in college-going behaviors across parental SES. An increase in the number of friends planning to attend 4-year college is associated with greater engagement in some college-going behaviors for Latinx students, though less so than for White students. These results have implications for how researchers conceptualize the Latinx–White college enrollment gap.

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Notes

  1. Observations are rounded to the nearest ten.

  2. Those missing on the dependent variables are retained just for when imputing missing independent variables; for more see the Missing Data section below and Von Hippel (2007).

  3. All analyses were conducted without weights. Unweighted regressions can be preferred when the weights are solely a function of the independent variables, providing more efficient estimates and reliable standard errors (Winship & Radbill, 1994). In addition, we are not using the full sample of ELS. As a sensitivity check, we also conducted all analyses after weighting the data by the base-year and second follow-up panel weight provided by ELS (F2BYWT) (the weighted versions of Tables 2, 3,4,5,6,7,8,9, and 10 can be found in the online appendix). Results with weights tended to show slightly larger gaps between White and Latinx students, though the substantive conclusions were the same.

  4. In separate analyses we removed immigrants from our sample to see if they were influencing the outcomes. However, the results were largely the same, and it was determined that leaving them in and indicating immigrant status was a better methodological choice.

  5. Test taking was confirmed by the College Board (makers of the SAT) and the ACT. Those students who indicated they took the test but were not verified by College Board or the ACT (about 5% of the sample) were included in the sample. Dropping them did not substantially change the results.

  6. In analyses not shown, we also included a variable that measured whether the student contacted various family members about college, and/or whether they consulted books or the Internet for information about college. We removed these variables from the final results as they were similar to the included variable.

  7. In separate analyses, we also interacted race/ethnicity with parental preference for their child to live at home during college. This interaction was only significant for contacting a school source about college. Latinx students were more likely to contact a school source about college the more important the parent said it was for the students to live at home during college. White students were less likely to contact a school source about college the more important it was for the parent that the student live at home.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Nicole Perez, and the editor and anonymous reviewers for critical feedback on drafts of this manuscript. Direct all correspondence to Mary Kate Blake (marykate.blake@valpo.edu).

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Blake, M.K., Langenkamp, A.G. Differences Between Latinx and White Students in College-Going Behaviors. Res High Educ 63, 248–270 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-021-09648-6

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