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Adaptation Strategy of the Upper Class and Fairness in Elite College Admission

  • Korean Journal of Sociology
  • 2020, 54(3), pp.35-83
  • DOI : 10.21562/kjs.2020.08.54.3.35
  • Publisher : The Korean Sociological Association
  • Research Area : Social Science > Sociology
  • Received : April 20, 2020
  • Accepted : July 2, 2020
  • Published : August 31, 2020

ChangHwan Kim 1 Heeyoun Shin 1

1Univ. of Kansas

Excellent Accredited

ABSTRACT

It is a well known fact that the probability of higher education is positively associated with the family socioeconomic (SES) background. There are multiple types of the college application and evaluation system in South Korea. Whether the influence of family SES varies by the application types has been hotly debated in South Korea. However, robust research on this topic is rare. Evidence supporting that the GPA system is relatively more favorable to students from the lower family SES and from rural areas than the SAT system is mostly based on descriptive statistics which limit their sample to those who entered the elite colleges. Because students from the lower SES tend to prefer the GPA system over other types, the analyses based on elite college goers cannot separate the interaction effect between SES and the application types from the selection effect into the GPA system. Using the 2016-2017 Graduates Occupational Mobility Survey, we assess the effect of the family SES on the probability of the matriculation into elite colleges and examine whether the effect of the family SES varies by the application types. We measure the family SES based on income, wealth, parents’ education, occupational prestige, and a composite index of these four criteria. Our results show that the influence of family SES is statistically significantly bigger in the SAT system than in the GPA system, even after controlling for high school types, region, and demographic covariates. Unlike the popular belief, the GPA system is not more favorable to the rural high school compared to the SAT system. These findings imply the importance of the adaptation strategy of the upper class in college entrance.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.