Shaping Elite College Pathways: Mapping the Field of Feeder High Schools in the United States

Despite pledges to increase student body diversity, low-income students and Black, Latinx, and Native American students remain grossly underrepresented at elite colleges. To date, most studies exploring stratification in college enrollment patterns have looked at this phenomenon from the student or organizational perspective—examining either students’ college choice process or the enrollment management practices of elite colleges. However, in this study, I suggest that one unexplored but potentially powerful mechanism shaping college access and student body diversity is the network of feeder schools that are connected to highly selective colleges in the United States. Guided broadly by relational sociology and social network theory, this dissertation uncovers the ways that feeder school relationships shape the field of highly selective admissions. Using an exploratory, mixed methods design that combines social network analysis with a qualitative case study approach, the first phase of the study examines the overall network architecture of feeder ties between 3,200 secondary schools and 76 highly selective colleges and universities. Then, in the second phase, I conducted interviews with 44 admissions officers and 38 college counselors who are a part of this network to explore the relational dynamics between feeder schools and highly selective colleges, attending to their consequences for access to and diversity in higher education. I find that private, predominantly white, and affluent high schools have more and stronger feeder ties to elite colleges compared to their public school, majority-minority high school, and less resourced counterparts. The network analysis in phase one revealed that four of the top 10 most central high schools in the network are private elite boarding schools. Through interviews in the second phase of the study, I also discovered that certain features of schools—namely, their curricula, resources, status, and capacity for relationship-building—contribute to the strength of ties they have to highly selective colleges. Qualitative findings suggest that feeder relationships are driven by the mechanisms of homophily, reciprocity, and trust, and these connections are facilitated by the frequent interactions and interpersonal relationships between admissions officers and college counselors. Based on these findings, I conclude that selective college admissions is, in fact, a relational process that unfolds within webs of social relations. Both feeder schools and elite colleges adopt habits and routines which serve to reproduce these relationships over time, with broad implications for access to elite higher education. Even if feeder relationships no longer guarantee entry into America’s most elite institutions, they continue to provide substantial advantages to already-advantaged high schools. If elite colleges are committed to increasing access and diversity, then they must critically evaluate existing interorganizational arrangements and routinized practices that drive decision-making in highly selective admissions.PhDHigher EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/171403/1/glasener_1.pd