This thesis explores the inequality of opportunities in higher education in the case of the Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul (UFFS). The main objective is to investigate relationships between gender, race and socioeconomic characteristics of the students, institutional aspects and academic performance in undergraduate access and completion. UFFS was created in 2009, reflecting the expansion and internalization of federal public higher education in Brazil in the particularities of its structure, its territorial scope and the profile of its students.The research was designed as a case study and combines qualitative strategies related to the analysis of institutional documents, with quantitative strategies that involve descriptive and inferential analyzes of student characteristics, performance, course and permanence policies and their relationships with outcomes such as dropout and the conclusion, based on the use of longitudinal data of new entrants by Enem, in the period from 2010 to 2018. The main results indicate that the access and affirmative action policies implemented at UFFS, including the Quota Law, contribute significantly to the reduction of social and racial inequalities. Since its creation, UFFS has maintained a student profile with more than 90% coming from public schools, a high percentage of rural students and workers and children of parents with low education and income. The implementation of the Quotas Law allowed for an increase in the access of black, brown and indigenous students in all areas of knowledge. In the dimension of dropout and completion of the course, the results indicate a greater weight of institutional aspects on these two outcomes: students who attend a full course and those who receive some type of student assistance and/or participate in extracurricular activities increase their chances of staying and completing the course. Another relevant result is that students from rural areas have higher percentages of completion and lower percentages of dropouts when compared to students from urban areas. In terms of gender and race, men and blacks present PUC-Rio -Certificação Digital Nº 1812212/CA more difficulties in completing an undergraduate when compared with white and women. Finally, performance proved to be a central issue in explaining dropout and course completion in association with student characteristics and especially with the type of course attended. In turn, a failure proved to be an important factor that affects most newcomers to UFFS, whether they are dropouts or graduates.These results indicate the need to implement specific institutional initiatives, aimed at strengthening student retention and reducing dropout and repetition, in addition to the need for further research to monitor the results of these initiatives, and which contribute to a better understanding of the factors associated with course evasion and internal and external mobility of UFFS students.