The Privatization of 'Savvy': Class Reproduction in the Era of College for All

The Engagement Gap

“…For this reason, investing in children’s extracurricular activities was once a shared, public concern—important not only for the individual child’s life chances but also for the nation’s unity and prosperity. Yet shrinking social networks and cuts in public spending have since rendered investment in children’s activities a private decision, the responsibility of parents alone (Silva, Snellman, and Frederick 2014). The growing gap observed in extracurricular opportunities is another hallmark of the trend toward privatizing childhood: it is evident that concern for the well-being of children generally has shriveled to the point where such concern applies only to one’s own offspring.…”

Translating Authentic Selves into Authentic Applications: Private College Consulting and Selective College Admissions

“…Class fundamentally affects access to these resources. Middle-class parents are more likely than working-class and poor parents to mobilize cultural resources, such as their own knowledge of the higher education system, to aid in their children's transition to a college-going adulthood (Lareau and Weininger 2008) and to circulate admissions savvy in their networks (Silva et al 2014). These admissions-related behaviors are a form of habitus for privileged families (Weis 2016), enabling students to accrue the credentials and send the high-status signals that colleges seek.…”

“…That is, colleges apply institutionalized standards, such as high school GPA, class rank, and standardized test scores, to evaluate students’ qualifications. From students’ perspectives, applying to college requires “savvy,” or “the tools, skills, knowledge, behaviors, and resources that must be mobilized, more or less consciously, in order to apply, get in, decide where to go, choose a major,” and so on (Silva et al 2014:40).…”

“…Theories of cultural capital can illuminate how stratification persists in admissions despite efforts 1 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA to mitigate it. Students enter the college application process with varying degrees of resources and information, and family class status plays an important role in students' abilities to understand and meet colleges' standards for qualifications and cultural fit (Lamont and Lareau 1988;Lareau and Weininger 2008;Silva, Snellman, and Frederick 2014). As colleges' criteria for evaluating merit multiply, to include assessments of students' character and authenticity, so too do families' strategies for navigating admissions.…”