Extracurriculars and College Admissions

In a string of posts reacting to the Espenshade, et al. finding that elite universities discriminate against white middle and working class applicants, Half Sigma asserted that they have it coming because they don’t participate sufficiently in extracurricular activities.  As I commented, this assertion struck me as implausible based on my own experience as a middle-class college applicant back in the mid-80’s.

As it turns out, Espenshade draws from the ETS’s Student Descriptive Questionnaire to address this issue.  It turns out that while there is not much difference between SES groupings in athletic and academic extracurricular participation among elite college applicants (as measured by the National Study of College Experience), there is a difference in three other categories of extra curricular participation:

Performing Arts	Lower 28 Working 47 Middle 68 Upper-Middle 65 Upper 48
Community Service	Lower 39 Working 81 Middle 83 Upper-Middle 76 Upper 74
Part-time Job	Lower 16 Working 45 Middle 41 Upper-Middle 33 Upper 13

The generalization appears to be that extracurricular activity peaks among middle-class applicants to elite colleges.  A similar pattern emerges when looking at leadership positions and awards in extracurricular activities.