What High-Achieving Low-Income Students Know About College

Abstract

Previous work (Hoxby and Avery 2014) shows that low-income higher achievers tend not to apply to selective colleges despite being extremely likely to be admitted with financial aid so generous that they would pay less than they do to attend the non-selective schools they usually attend. The Expanding College Opportunities project is a randomized controlled trial that provides such students with individualized information about the college application process and colleges' net prices. In other work (Hoxby and Turner 2013), we show that the informational intervention substantially raises students' probability of applying to, being admitted at, enrolling at, and progressing at selective colleges. In this study, we show that the intervention actually changes students' informedness on key topics such as the cost of college, the availability of the curricula and peers they seek, and the different types of colleges available to them. We highlight topics on which the control students, who experienced no intervention, are seriously misinformed.

College Choice as a Collective Decision

“…College policies that must be targeted include outreach programs, which decide whether they are attempting to speak directly to students, parents, or both. There is growing interest in a particular flavor of low‐cost outreach program, which attempts to improve educational choice, or learn about it, by providing information directly to students or parents (e.g., Bleemer and Zafar ; Hastings, Neilson, and Zimmerman ; Hoxby and Turner ; Jensen ). These interventions must be properly targeted, deciding who to educate, in order to function effectively.…”

“…In line with policy prescriptions from the wider husband/wife household choice literature, policy makers could gain leverage by properly considering policy targeting. In addition to college‐specific policy that reaches out to potential students in an attempt to entice them away from competitors (Jacob, McCall, and Stange, forthcoming), there is a wide range of potential and existing informational and persuasive outreach policies that attempt to sway student and parent choice about whether or not to go to college, where to go, or what to major in, in the studies by Swail and Perna (), Domina (), Jensen (), Hoxby and Turner (), College Affordability and Transparency Center (), Hastings, Neilson, and Zimmerman (), and Bleemer and Zafar ().…”

“…Furthermore, students may not be initially aware of their own preferences and abilities, which leads to meaningful differences between ex ante and ex post educational returns (Altonji, Blom, and Meghir ). Students may not even know what options are available to them, the “choice set problem.” While the choice set problem has been long known, recent work has demonstrated the significant impact that it has on choice, especially for low‐income students (Hoxby and Avery ; Hoxby and Turner ).…”

“…Education policy can benefit in the same way from a better understanding of targeting. Targeting becomes especially important in light of a new wave of college policies that provide outreach and information about college (e.g., Bleemer and Zafar ; College Affordability and Transparency Center ; Domina ; Hastings, Neilson, and Zimmerman ; Hoxby and Turner ; Jensen ; Swail and Perna ). These policies necessarily must choose which members of a household to focus on.…”

Multifaceted Aid for Low‐income Students and College Outcomes: Evidence From North Carolina

“…A second line of recent research has focused on nonpecuniary interventions, such as college counseling and information provision. At present, much of this work explores the ability of such interventions to influence students' choices about college‐going—whether by improving student‐institution matches (Hoxby and Avery ; Hoxby and Turner ), encouraging students to apply for need‐based financial aid (Bettinger et al ), providing better information about the costs and payoffs of college (Oreopoulos and Dunn ), or counseling students through the college transition process (Castleman, Page, and Schooley ; Castleman and Page ).…”