A growing body of literature has demonstrated that the college preparation and admissions process is a powerful force in the lives of some high school students. However, mounting evidence illuminates unintended consequences of the college admission pressures on students. This study endeavored to gain an understanding of the lived experiences of…

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…

When school choice policies position young people to compete with one another to access public educational resources, students stand to experience these policies in not only academic, but also civic dimensions. Young people's very encounters with competitive school choice policy through their day-to-day schooling constitute a civic experience.…

This study develops a comprehensive theoretical framework regarding the evolution of the class divide in postsecondary education. I conceptualize three prototypes of class inequality--effectively maintained, declining, and expanding--and associate their emergence with the level of competition in college admissions. I also unearth the twin…