By chance or by design: structures of opportunity for college-bound African Americans

• Main Author: MacGowan, Bradford Richard
• Language: en_US
• Published: Boston University 2019
• Subjects: African Americans; Higher education
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/2144/33512

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University === This exploratory qualitative study investigated the college choice processes of 25 African American college students. Individual interviews that asked the students to look back on their college choice processes during high school provided the data for the study. The goals of the study were to (1) identify the difficulties that these students encountered when searching for and applying to colleges, (2) identify the factors that helped them succeed in gaining acceptance to college, and (3) develop a model of the college choice process based on the identified factors. The findings provide understandings of the positive and negative factors that African American students may encounter in the college choice process and provide a model of the optimal process. This model is designed to help counselors in high schools and colleges change organizational arrangements and procedures, both within and between institutions, to better assist African American high school students in the transition to higher education. Other wider societal and political changes that may assist students in the transition to higher education are identified and discussed.