Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ)
Category: Pathways to and Through Postsecondary
Lower-resourced high schools are far less likely to offer calculus, raising concerns that calculus availability may be a gatekeeper in selective college admissions. Using a lab-in-the-field experiment (292 admissions officers, 1768 total observations), we investigate whether engineering applicants are penalized for not taking calculus—even when it was unavailable to them. We also investigate whether Asian American applicants without calculus are more heavily penalized compared to similar White applicants. We find that not taking calculus decreases an applicant’s probability of receiving an admit recommendation by 16 percentage points, but find no evidence that Asian American applicants without calculus are penalized more. Exploratory analyses using process-tracing data suggest the estimated calculus penalty varies by amount of time admissions officers spent examining the high school profile.
Keywords
college admissions, calculus, decision-making, holistic review, lab-in-the-field experiment
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/r5zn-e087
