Peer Influences on the College-Going Decisions of Low Socioeconomic Status Urban Youth

The roles that peers play in the decision to go to college are not well understood. Logistic regression is used to explore the role that peers play in the college-going decisions of a sample of low-income urban minority public high school graduates drawn from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88) database. Friends’ plans are found to be the single best predictor of 4-year college enrollment for these low-income urban minority students, even when controlling for variables traditionally assumed to affect college going. These peer variables are stronger predictors of 4-year college-going behavior for this group than they are for a comparison sample of all U.S. high school graduates. These data are important for the formation of policies to improve all levels of college access programming.