The objective of this article is to discuss the advantages of effective educational monitoring in the context of a longitudinal RCT. Intentional data collection and monitoring enables the important assessment of issues of both internal and external validity. We discuss how we used mixed methods data collection to reveal important changing contextual factors in an evaluation of a postsecondary access program in the U.S. state of Texas. Specifically, we employed quantitative analysis of the RCT to compare the college enrollment rates of high schools that were randomly assigned a college adviser with schools that were not assigned a college adviser. We employed survey data collection, qualitative interviews, and site visits to monitor the fidelity of treatment implementation and compliance to treatment assignment over time. In the absence of monitoring treatment fidelity and compliance over time in both treatment and control schools, we would have missed critical changes that explain the observed attenuation of treatment effect estimates. We also discuss how monitoring can inform defenses of the stable unit treatment value assumption and suggest how effective the program will be when applied more widely or to other contexts.

In a longitudinal interview-based study of racial-minority students of low-income or working-class origin at an elite private university in the United States, we examine how class and race co-determine students' friendship-making patterns. We advance previous research in college students' friendship-making by applying a dual lens of intersectionality theory and sociological group-making. Using this lens, we find that class and race collapse into each other, but in two distinct ways. Our main sample of multiply marginalized students occupy a class-racial intersectional position. By contrast, their class-race counterparts, who are envisioned and described as wealthy Whites, constitute not a class-racial intersectional position but a class-racial status group, leading to analytically distinct friendship-making dynamics between the two types of students. Our findings also entreat us to call for an analytical distinction between intersectional position and status group, leading to a dual lens that will serve future sociological research attentive to group-making processes and group-based conflict.

Computational text analysis has grown in popularity among social scientists due to the massive influx of digitized data available to study. However, much of this research disconnects patterns observed in text from information about the original authors. Eliding authorship considerations from sociological analysis of text can potentially lead to claims and assertions of trends that are independent from the social actors, conditions, interactions, and contexts which the text was produced. While text analysis without authorship information can yield reasonable inferences about society, complementing that approach with research that explicitly considers the people producing the text could expand the theoretical and empirical scope of work in this area. In this paper, we adapt perspectives from sociolinguistics and explicitly consider categorical identity markers of authors and geography as foundational axes of variation in textual data. We explore these dimensions in a large corpus of college admissions essays (n = 254,820 essays submitted by 83,538 applicants) and metadata about applicant identity, including the ZIP code of their high school. After generating features of the essays using computational methods, we find that author identity markers, such as gender, parental education, and socioeconomic status are highly salient. We also find that ZIP code level socioeconomic measures are extremely correlated with the writing style and content of local applicants. We also find that individuals whose personal identities are spatially unique–that is, demographically different from others in their immediate content–were most likely to be misclassified by our models, indicating that writing is influenced both socially and spatially. This work clarifies how authorship characteristics, like identity and spatial context, constrain the breadth of what we write and how we write by showing strong alignment between text and authors that is observable through machine reading of text.

Large language models have become popular over a short period of time because they can generate text that resembles human writing across various domains and tasks. The popularity and breadth of use also put this technology in the position to fundamentally reshape how written language is perceived and evaluated. It is also the case that spoken language has long played a role in maintaining power and hegemony in society, especially through ideas of social identity and “correct” forms of language. But as human communication becomes even more reliant on text and writing, it is important to understand how these processes might shift and who is more likely to see their writing styles reflected back at them through modern AI. We therefore ask the following question: who does generative AI write like? To answer this, we compare writing style features in over 150,000 college admissions essays submitted to a large public university system and an engineering program at an elite private university with a corpus of over 25,000 essays generated with GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 to the same writing prompts. We find that human-authored essays exhibit more variability across various individual writing style features (e.g., verb usage) than AI-generated essays. Overall, we find that the AI-generated essays are most similar to essays authored by students who are males with higher levels of social privilege. These findings demonstrate critical misalignments between human and AI authorship characteristics, which may affect the evaluation of writing and calls for research on control strategies to improve alignment.

Systematic literature reviews are attempts to understand conversations between researchers working to develop solutions to common problems. These conversations often stretch back decades and can involve the participation of dozens of authors. Traditional approaches to systematic reviews are ill-equipped to make sense of the sheer volume of relevant literature when exploring the emergence and evolution of ambiguous ideas across large knowledge communities. This article presents three innovative applications of Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods to explore the emergence and evolution of accountability in higher education across a collection of 450 peer-reviewed articles published from 1974-2017 and their corresponding 12,270 references. First, qualitative data from articles and references were integrated into new interactive joint displays called Narrated Network Diagrams, creating opportunities to more accurately assess themes and meanings in literature by connecting structures in co-citation networks with relevant relational stories. Second, time was elevated in the analysis procedure to capture the dynamism of knowledge formation. Third, underutilized descriptive network statistics were applied to the co-citation network analysis to generate new insights such as different mechanisms for authors gaining influence in a knowledge community. Ultimately, this article presents an innovative longitudinal Mixed Methods Social Network Analysis (MMSNA) approach to systematic literature reviews, significantly advancing previous SNA methods integration in this critical research practice.

Purpose: Schoolwide college access programs are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in high schools across the country. Research on their effectiveness in improving college-going rates is inconclusive, prompting scholars to question how programs affect practices in schools. To better understand how schools and college access programs work in partnership to expand college advising resources, we study the practices of high schools partnered with a national college access program. Research Methods/Approach: We conducted case studies of two schools, interviewing 118 teachers, staff, parents, students, and program partners over 2 years of data collection. Using the concept of school social capital-the cognitive, material, and social resources that schools derive from their partnership with other organizations-we examined the different ways that school staff interact and collaborate with college access partner staff. Findings: We find that partnerships can help schools become more extensive brokers of college knowledge and advice by engaging in three practices: referrals, collaborative actions, and norm-setting practices. When engaged in collaboration and norm-setting, staff roles expand to include the provision of college advising services and contribute to increasing student access to advising schoolwide. We further find that school leadership plays a significant role in facilitating the types of practices that emerge from college access partnerships. Implications: Although college access partnerships can give rise to multiple advising agents in a school, such effects must be fostered. The alignment of values and goals between partners appears necessary to facilitate brokering practices between staff, as well as leadership to sanction those practices.

This paper was published in Socius: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231221127537. How does gender inform initial academic commitments and narrative-self presentation during the college application process? We leverage 60,000 undergraduate applications submitted to the University of California in 2016 to investigate the role of gender in intended major choice and in the crafting of essays narrating academic interest. We show that extant gender segregation of academic disciplines manifests in the intended major commitments college applicants make, with gendered relationships with SAT Math scores underlying intended majors in biology and engineering, the two most popular and gender-segregated disciplines. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP), we find that author gender is more predictive of essay topic in engineering contexts than in biology, with women crossing gendered academic boundaries writing about topics that implicitly signal their gender identity, perhaps in a bid to mitigate gender-atypical academic commitments. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for academic gender segregation upon matriculation.

US colleges and universities are defined by their exclusivity, and the most prestigious schools reject most of those who apply. Yet these same schools also widely advertise their inclusiveness, encouraging students from all backgrounds to submit applications and highlighting evaluation protocols that identify many characteristics worthy of consideration for admission. We surface this paradox and use it as motivation to theorize a little studied component of college applications: personal essays. Drawing from cultural sociology, we posit that the commission and production of essays extolling applicant worth and worthiness is a ritual practice that instantiates an idea of merit that is broadly shared among those who submit applications to admissions-selective schools. We pursue this work empirically by observing essay prompt selections of 55,016 applicants to the University of California in 2016 and conducting human readings and statistical analyses of 3,519 unique essays. Results indicate that prompts and essays encompass a broad but bounded range of life challenges that selective schools and applicants consider meritorious. The entire process of application to selective US schools helps to reify a national faith in a broad and inclusive conception of merit.

How does gender inform initial academic commitments and narrative self-presentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields during the college application process? Analyzing 60,000 undergraduate applications to the University of California, the authors surface two key findings. First, extant gender segregation of academic disciplines also manifests in intended major choice. Additionally, gender and SAT Math scores together strongly predict intent to major in biology and engineering, the most popular and gender-segregated majors. Second, using natural language processing, the investigators find that author gender is more predictive of essay topics written by prospective engineers than prospective biologists. Specifically, women intending to major in engineering write about essay topics that signal their gender identity to a greater degree than women intending to major in biology, perhaps to mitigate gender-transgressive academic commitments. The authors subsequently argue that prescriptive and proscriptive ideas about men and women’s academic choices remain highly salient in a moment of imagining future academic and professional selves.

Computational text analysis has grown in popularity among social scientists due to the massive influx of digitized data. However, connecting text to authorship could be a boon for digital demography and expand the scope of computational text analysis from trends of what is being written toward social patterning of the people producing it. We explore this potential through examinations of a large corpus of college admissions essays (n = 254,820 essays submitted by 83,538 applicants) and show how personal identity markers and ZIP code-level social context data influence large scale processes of textual production. After generating numerical representations of the essays using computational methods, we model the relationships between different identity and spatial characteristics of applicants and their local communities. We find strong relationships between identity and spatial features with the essays. We also find that individuals whose personal identities are spatially unique--that is, demographically different from others in their immediate content--were most likely to be misclassified, indicating that writing is influenced both socially and spatially. This work clarifies how authorship characteristics shape large scale textual production processes, like college admissions, and complements other large scale analyses of text by focusing on authorship rather than purely textual patterns.

Multiracial students are increasingly prominent in higher education research, and new critical theories of Multiraciality in education have emerged. In this area of research, personal identity is salient as an object of inquiry. Drawing from the sociology of ethnicity and migration, we propose an alternative approach to Multiracial students that attends to their agentive crossing and negotiation of boundaries, as they petition for membership in ethnic and racial student groups and alter how they are racially identified by other students. We draw upon data from a longitudinal, interview-based study of university students, sampling for ‘multiply-minoritized’ Multiracial students. Through inductive analysis, we conclude that Multiracial students’ agendas of friendship are strongly oriented toward gaining validated membership claims in racial groups on campus, as opposed to seeking recognition as Multiracial. We therefore suggest that practical interventions in support of Multiracials may benefit more from attending to their boundary-work activities.

There is substantial evidence of the relationship between household income and achievement on the standardized tests often required for college admissions, yet little comparable inquiry considers the essays typically required of applicants to selective U.S. colleges and universities. We used a corpus of 240,000 admission essays submitted by 60,000 applicants to the University of California in November 2016 to measure relationships between the content of admission essays, self-reported household income, and SAT scores. We quantified essay content using correlated topic modeling and essay style using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. We found that essay content and style had stronger correlations to self-reported household income than did SAT scores and that essays explained much of the variance in SAT scores. This analysis shows that essays encode similar information as the SAT and suggests that college admission protocols should attend to how social class is encoded in non-numerical components of applications.

Purpose Although a student’s sense of belonging is a key factor of persistence in higher education, research on international students’ belonging tends to rely on domain-agnostic survey measures and promote interpretations that focus mainly on social integration and adjustment. This paper aims to examine how male international graduate students in engineering understand and describe their sense of belonging and how they perceive its development at their institution. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 12 male electrical engineering doctoral students at a selective research university in the USA. This interpretive approach allowed students to articulate their subjective understanding of belonging within a specific disciplinary context. Findings Contrary to the broad notion that the social domain is the primary locus of students’ sense of belonging, participants emphasized the academic domain when referring to their struggles with, and attempts to develop, a sense of belonging. Results suggest that the meritocratic culture of engineering education may influence students to prioritize the academic domain when conceptualizing and developing their belonging. Moreover, the strong academic motivation endemic to international students pursuing graduate education at a top American research university intensified this mechanism. Originality/value This study argues that universities seeking to enhance international graduate students’ sense of belonging can be more intentional in providing opportunities for students to establish positive academic identities. Furthermore, addressing students’ non-academic identity and marginalization as relevant and essential topics in engineering will expand their understanding of what means to belong.

College admissions in the United States is carried out by a human-centered method of evaluation known as holistic review, which typically involves reading original narrative essays submitted by each applicant. The legitimacy and fairness of holistic review, which gives human readers significant discretion over determining each applicant's fitness for admission, has been repeatedly challenged in courtrooms and the public sphere. Using a unique corpus of 283,676 application essays submitted to a large, selective, state university system between 2015 and 2016, we assess the extent to which applicant demographic characteristics can be inferred from application essays. We find a relatively interpretable classifier (logistic regression) was able to predict gender and household income with high levels of accuracy. Findings suggest that data auditing might be useful in informing holistic review, and perhaps other evaluative systems, by checking potential bias in human or computational readings.

College admissions in the United States is carried out by a human-centered method of evaluation known as holistic review, which typically involves reading original narrative essays submitted by each applicant. The legitimacy and fairness of holistic review, which gives human readers significant discretion over determining each applicant's fitness for admission, has been repeatedly challenged in courtrooms and the public sphere. Using a unique corpus of 283,676 application essays submitted to a large, selective, state university system between 2015 and 2016, we assess the extent to which applicant demographic characteristics can be inferred from application essays. We find a relatively interpretable classifier (logistic regression) was able to predict gender and household income with high levels of accuracy. Findings suggest that data auditing might be useful in informing holistic review, and perhaps other evaluative systems, by checking potential bias in human or computational readings.

This paper was published in Poetics: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304422X22000821. US colleges and universities are defined by their exclusivity, and the most prestigious schools reject most of those who apply. Yet these same schools also widely advertise their inclusiveness, encouraging students from all backgrounds to submit applications and highlighting evaluation protocols that identify many characteristics worthy of consideration for admission. We surface this paradox and use it as motivation to theorize a little studied component of college applications: personal essays. Drawing from cultural sociology, we posit that the commission and production of essays extolling applicant worth and worthiness is a ritual practice that instantiates an idea of merit that is broadly shared among those who submit applications to admissions-selective schools. We pursue this work empirically by observing essay prompt selections of 55,016 applicants to the University of California in 2016 and conducting human readings and statistical analyses of 3,519 unique essays. Results indicate that prompts and essays encompass a broad but bounded range of activities and experiences that selective schools and applicants consider meritorious. The entire process of application to selective US schools helps to reify a national cultural belief we call merit for all.

Reviewed by: Student Life as Relational Networks. Connecting in College: How Friendship Networks Matter for Academic and Social Success by Janice M. McCabe anthony lising antonio Student Life as Relational Networks. Connecting in College: How Friendship Networks Matter for Academic and Social Success Janice M. McCabe Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016, 226pages, $30.00 (softcover) As student affairs practitioners and researchers, we are often taught to view our campuses as communities of individuals. Our counseling backgrounds prompt us to see individual differences, take into account individual circumstances, and work with students on a case-by-case basis. Likewise, our research training prompts an autonomous agentic view of students whereby we presume independent decision-making and action amidst varying contexts and environments that make up the college milieu. And further, we all base much of our current work on a foundation of empirical and theoretical literature that for over half a century has reinforced an independent-individual conception of college student behavior. This bias toward individualism is highly effective, particularly from a developmental point of view. We understand that students develop psychosocially on individualized trajectories, and this understanding helps us support the particular challenge that they are facing. The last two decades, however, have witnessed a successful challenge to the primacy of the individualist perspective in social science. In 1997, sociologist Mustafa Emirbayer published “The Relational Manifesto,” a call to scholars to pursue our understanding of the social world from a relational frame, wherein we conceptualize action among individuals as not only interdependent but fully formulated by the relations they inhabit. More recently, Clarke and antonio (2012) made a similar plea directed to scholars of higher education, imploring them to develop “a better understanding of the nature and structure of the relations in which students are embedded, the learning outcomes that are attributable to them, and the organizational factors that affect such structures” (p. 32). Janice McCabe answers these calls with the first book-length study of college students using a relational approach. Connecting in College is a major contribution toward moving the study of college students in this much needed direction. McCabe, a sociologist trained at Indiana, takes seriously the assumption that student action is in fact dependent on the relationships with whom they are tied or connected. McCabe’s work lies in the well-cultivated area of academic and social success, but her relational framing raises an entirely new question: How does the structure and character of student friendship ties matter? Using a mixed-method approach, McCabe examines the friendship networks of 67 undergraduates at a large, public research university in the Midwest. She purposefully sampled students across involvement in various activities as well as oversampled Black and Latinx students (together about half of the sample). McCabe chose not to oversample the similarly sized Asian American Pacific Islander population (there are 3 in the sample), noting that other marginalized groups do not suffer similar educational inequities. This rationale is disputed by the literature (Museus & Kiang, 2009) and represents a lost opportunity for this important study. Native Americans appear to be a tiny fraction of the student population [End Page 472] and also were not studied. She makes use of surveys and interviews collected from students while attending college and 5 years later, allowing for an examination of how friendship networks change after college. McCabe’s relational approach nets us a new vantage point on student life. She carefully collects from informants a description of their friends—and most importantly—information on how their friends are connected to each other. The resulting collection of these egocentric friendship networks are descriptions of students, not as singular individuals, but as people inextricably woven into a web of friendships that provide social and academic support. McCabe finds three unique network structures among her sample, dedicating a chapter each to students possessing them: tight-knitters, compartmentalizers, and samplers. Tight-knitters have a single group of friends that are generally all friends with each other. This group tends to describe their friends as socially supportive and emotionally close, with a fictive kinship quality. Within these networks there is a sense of community, easily shared information and other resources, and a fair amount of...