Recently, multiple studies have focused on the phenomenon of "undermatching"--when students attend a college for which they are overqualified, as measured by test scores and grades. The extant literature suggests that students who undermatch fail to maximize their potential. However, gaps remain in our knowledge about how student…

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…

The emerging female advantage in education has received considerable attention in the popular media and recent research. We examine a persistent exception to this trend: women's underrepresentation in America's most competitive colleges and universities. Using nationally generalizable data spanning four decades, we evaluate evidence for…

Many students enroll in less selective colleges than they are qualified to attend, despite low graduation rates at these institutions. Some scholars have argued that qualified students should enroll in the most selective colleges because they have greater resources to support student success. However, selective college attendance is endogenous, so…