Social Capital and College Planning

Abstract

Through analyses of focus group transcripts, the author highlights key school-based supports and resources students viewed as helpful in their college-planning activities and explores the challenges students' expressed about being exposed to school-based social capital while living in disadvantaged community contexts. The findings suggest the importance of intersecting dosages of school-based social capital such as high expectations and experiential learning to help students complete their college-planning activities as well as the need for coping strategies for the psychological barriers of being college-bound within contexts where college access is not widely available.