The Privatization of 'Savvy': Class Reproduction in the Era of College for All

Silva, Jennifer M.; Snellman, Kaisa; Frederick, Carl B.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2473462

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…For this reason, investing in children’s extracurricular activities was once a shared, public concern—important not only for the individual child’s life chances but also for the nation’s unity and prosperity. Yet shrinking social networks and cuts in public spending have since rendered investment in children’s activities a private decision, the responsibility of parents alone (Silva, Snellman, and Frederick 2014). The growing gap observed in extracurricular opportunities is another hallmark of the trend toward privatizing childhood: it is evident that concern for the well-being of children generally has shriveled to the point where such concern applies only to one’s own offspring.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Engagement Gap

Snellman¹,

Silva²,

Frederick³

et al. 2014

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Scie

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137

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Participation in extracurricular activities is associated with positive youth outcomes such as higher education attainment and greater future earnings. We present new analyses of four national longitudinal surveys of American high school students that reveal a sharp increase in the class gap in extracurricular involvement. Since the 1970s, upper-middle-class students have become increasingly active in school clubs and sport teams, while participation among working-class students has veered in the opposite direction. These growing gaps have emerged in the wake of rising income inequality, the introduction of “pay to play” programs, and increasing time and money investments by upper-middle-class parents in children’s development. These trends need to be taken into account in any new initiative to monitor mobility. They also present a challenge to the American ideal of equal opportunity insofar as participation in organized activities shapes patterns of social mobility.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Engagement Gap

Snellman¹,

Silva²,

Frederick³

et al. 2014

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Scie

Self Cite

137

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Class fundamentally affects access to these resources. Middle-class parents are more likely than working-class and poor parents to mobilize cultural resources, such as their own knowledge of the higher education system, to aid in their children's transition to a college-going adulthood (Lareau and Weininger 2008) and to circulate admissions savvy in their networks (Silva et al 2014). These admissions-related behaviors are a form of habitus for privileged families (Weis 2016), enabling students to accrue the credentials and send the high-status signals that colleges seek.…”

Section: Class-based and Racialized Cultural Capital In College Admis...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That is, colleges apply institutionalized standards, such as high school GPA, class rank, and standardized test scores, to evaluate students’ qualifications. From students’ perspectives, applying to college requires “savvy,” or “the tools, skills, knowledge, behaviors, and resources that must be mobilized, more or less consciously, in order to apply, get in, decide where to go, choose a major,” and so on (Silva et al 2014:40).…”

Section: Navigating College Admissions Amid a “Shifting Meritocracy”mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Theories of cultural capital can illuminate how stratification persists in admissions despite efforts 1 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA to mitigate it. Students enter the college application process with varying degrees of resources and information, and family class status plays an important role in students' abilities to understand and meet colleges' standards for qualifications and cultural fit (Lamont and Lareau 1988;Lareau and Weininger 2008;Silva, Snellman, and Frederick 2014). As colleges' criteria for evaluating merit multiply, to include assessments of students' character and authenticity, so too do families' strategies for navigating admissions.…”

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Translating Authentic Selves into Authentic Applications: Private College Consulting and Selective College Admissions

Huang

2023

Sociol Educ

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Stratification in selective college admissions persists even as colleges’ criteria for evaluating merit have multiplied in efforts to increase socioeconomic and racial diversity. Middle-class and affluent families increasingly turn to privatized services, such as private college consulting, to navigate what they perceive to be a complicated and opaque application process. How independent educational consultants (IECs) advise students can thus serve as a lens for understanding how the rules of college admissions are interpreted and taught to students. Through 50 in-depth interviews with IECs, I find that IECs encourage students to be authentic by being true to themselves but that demonstrating authenticity requires attention to how one’s authentic self will be perceived. Translating an authentic self into an authentic application also involves class-based and racialized considerations, particularly for Asian American students who are susceptible to being stereotyped as inauthentic. These findings suggest that efforts to improve diversity must be carefully implemented, or they risk reproducing inequality.

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The Privatization of 'Savvy': Class Reproduction in the Era of College for All

Cited by 2 publications

References 66 publications

The Engagement Gap

The Engagement Gap

Translating Authentic Selves into Authentic Applications: Private College Consulting and Selective College Admissions

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