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""Having the right info"": College readiness as college knowledge among minoritized students in an urban education setting

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""Having the right info"": College readiness as college knowledge among minoritized students in an urban education setting

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Content Running head: COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 1

Copyright 2018 Patrick Dale Patterson
“HAVING THE RIGHT INFO”: COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE
AMONG MINORITIZED STUDENTS IN AN URBAN EDUCATION SETTING

by

Patrick Dale Patterson

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

May 2018

COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 2
Dedication
Foremost, I would like to dedicate this work to my husband. Scott has been an eternal
fountain of support. I can imagine no other person I would ever want to spend the rest of my
days with. Our love motivates me in all that I do.
I too would like to dedicate this to my mother. Having gotten pregnant before finishing
high school, you did what so many other women did at that time and dropped out. Three kids and
forty years after you had my sister, here I am finishing this dissertation. Though you experienced
many hardships, I know your greatest trial came in the middle of this dissertation process:
cancer. I have been so impressed by your motivation to keep going and this motivation has
inspired me in this process. To my father, too, I am so grateful. You pushed me to pursue a
college education, something you didn’t get the opportunity to do yourself. You’ve supported
me, Crystal, and Toni and been there for your grandkids and, especially in her most important
time of need, Mom. Thank you.
To all of my family, you are why I am where I am today. Your perseverance, support,
and love has gotten me through all that I do. I will never be able to payback what you have given
to me, except to hope that I can inspire my family in the same way that you’ve inspired me.

COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 3
Acknowledgment
The list of people to acknowledge is truly endless. Importantly, though, I want to
acknowledge Josh Watson. Much of the first three chapters of this dissertation were co-authored
with him. And, while each of us made modifications for our final product, your constant pushing
truly has gotten me where I am today. Without you to keep me on track, I truly don’t know
where I would be in this process.
Similarly, I want to recognize my dissertation chair. Dr. Paula M. Carbone is a true
inspiration. Though you’re a middle school teacher by trade and your research has focused
largely on teacher education, you took on four higher education students. I am constantly
impressed by how well you’ve done that and how far we’ve come with your support.
I, too, want to acknowledge my colleagues, many of whom have been a great support and
have allowed me the time and flexibility to succeed in this program. Terri Thomas and Laura
Romero, my supervisors during this process – thank you. And because this is a practitioner-level
degree, I, too, want to recognize the practitioners who continue to inspire me. Jessica Gibson, an
Assistant Dean at Rossier, you truly inspire me in your work. My colleagues Evan Williams and
Kelly Trepagnier, among many others, thank you for being cheerleaders and supporters.
Certainly, I must acknowledge each of my participants. Annabeth, Emely, Jasmine,
Julieta, and Laila may be pseudonyms, but to me they represent all the people who are very
much like each of them. Though I am myself a first-generation college student, I carry many
privileges – being White, a man, cisgender. Each of you had to face institutions that were often
not set up for your success and the help you’ve provided me in doing this study and providing
implications for practice and research is tremendous. None of you necessarily gained anything
from the interview experience, but you need to know that I truly have. Thank you.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 4
Table of Contents
Dedication 2
Acknowledgment 3
Abstract 6
Chapter One: Introduction 7
Background of the Problem 7
Statement of the Problem 11
Purpose of the Study 12
Significance of the Study 13
Limitations and Delimitations 14
Definition of Terms 15
Organization of the Study 17
Chapter Two: Literature Review 18
History of the College Readiness for Minoritized Students 20
Historical Background of Remediation and College Readiness 21
College Readiness Perspectives of Secondary and Postsecondary Institutions 23
Student Proficiency & Remedial Education 24
Current State of College Readiness 25
College Readiness in the 21st Century 25
Opportunity Gaps, Remediation and Preparedness 27
College Readiness Policies, Programs, and Supports 30
College Completion for Minoritized Students 32
Black and Latinx Students at Highly Selective Institutions of Higher Education 33
Important Constructs of College Readiness for Minoritized Students 35
From Achievement Gaps to Opportunity Gaps 35
College Readiness and Remediation 42
Social and Cultural Capital 44
Conceptual Framework: Community Cultural Wealth 48
Summary 53
Chapter Three: Methodology 55
Methods 56
Sample and Site Selection 56
Data Collection 58
Data Analysis 60
Researcher Biases & Positionality 61
Chapter Four: Findings 63
Site 63
Table 1: Participant Demographic Chart 66
Participants 67
Research Question 1 69
College Readiness Defined as College Knowledge 69
Not Feeling College-Ready 73
Important Ways Participants Were Encouraged 78
Summary 81
Research Question 2 81
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 5
Help-Seeking 82
Setting an Example 83
Involvement 86
Summary 88
Conclusion 89
Chapter Five: Discussion 90
Brief Summary of Findings 92
Implications for Practice 93
Focus on College Knowledge in High School College Counseling 93
High School Involvement as a Catalyst of College Readiness 96
Recommendations for Research 97
Conclusion 99
References 101
Appendix A: Student Interview Protocol 118
Appendix B: Staff Interview Protocol 121
Appendix C: Informed Consent Sheet 123

COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 6
Abstract
This qualitative study applied a critical race theory lens to understand minoritized
students’ college readiness experiences at a highly selective research university to inform K-12
and higher education practice. The purpose of this study was to privilege oppressed voices in
highlighting specific ways the college readiness gap can be closed for minoritized students,
moving toward equity in higher education attainment and completion. The research questions
involve understanding these students’ college readiness and how they informed their college
experiences. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews developed with a critical race
lens to encourage counter-storytelling among the participants.
Findings indicate participants tend to define college readiness around college knowledge,
rather than more traditional notions of remediation. Additionally, even when the women came to
college as college-ready by these traditional notions, they often did not feel fully college-ready.
Findings imply that high school counselors should focus on college knowledge in their
counseling, even if they believe students receive this knowledge elsewhere. Moreover,
practitioners should understand that cultural dissonance may exist between students’ home
cultures and school cultures and work to diminish this dissonance while supporting students in
navigating it. Moreover, because involvement in college was important to helping students build
the social capital necessary to navigate college knowledge, high school teachers, administrators,
and counselors should encourage similar forms of involvement in high school. Conclusions
suggest specific ways in which practitioners and researchers can enhance the college readiness
experiences for these minoritized students.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 7
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1

The focus of this dissertation was to address the problem of the disproportionate number
of first-generation Latinx college students at highly selective institutions of higher education
who, although accepted, do not feel college-ready. Moreover, student voices are often ignored or
silenced when it comes to college readiness policies and practices. As a result, this dissertation
also sought to address the role of student agency in illuminating the voices of students in this
matter. This chapter presents the background of the problem to set the context for the study. In
the background for the study section, concepts on opportunity gaps are introduced (Milner, 2010,
2012) and educational debts (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Then, concepts related to college readiness
are discussed (Almeida, 2015a; 2015b; Duncheon, 2015; Rueda, 2005), followed by a
background of the discrepancies of college readiness between secondary and postsecondary
education (Levin & Calcagno, 2008; Michaels, Hawthorne, Cuevas, & Mateev, 2011). The
statement of the problem highlights evidence of the problem. The chapter ends with the purpose
and significance of the study as well as its limitations and delimitations followed by the
definition of terms and overview of the dissertation structure.
Background of the Problem
The education field has moved from discussing educational achievement gaps to
discussing educational opportunity gaps (Milner, 2010). Achievement gap mindsets frame White
students as the norm, compare White students to students of color without understanding their
differences, conceptualize students of color from a deficit mindset, and focus on students over
structures (Milner, 2012). Opportunity gap mindsets focus, instead, on oppressive systems

1
Chapters One, Two, and Three were co-authored by Joshua Watson (degree candidate for the EdD in Educational
Leadership at the University of Southern California; watsonjd@usc.edu), however some revisions were made for the
final dissertation solely by the author of this dissertation.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 8
(Milner, 2010). Milner identified five major areas from which opportunity gaps emerge: color
blindness, cultural conflicts, the myth of meritocracy, low expectations and deficit mindsets, and
context-neutral mindsets. Color blindness exists when individuals say they “do not see color,”
which, in turn, ignores an important aspect of a person’s background. Cultural conflicts are the
cultural incongruences between teachers and students, where teachers tend to operate from
dominant cultural ways of knowing. The myth of meritocracy exists when privileged educators
believe success and failure are earned. Low expectations and deficit mindsets result when
teachers see different thinking as deficient and set lower expectations as a result. Context-neutral
mindsets arise when teachers fail to consider the social and cultural context of students’ lives.
Opportunity gaps are related to Ladson-Billings’ (2006) concept of education debts.
Ladson-Billings identifies four types of education debts: historical debts resulting from
educational disparities caused by laws, courts, and segregation; economic debts arising from
funding inequities for minoritized students; sociopolitical debts resulting from lack of access to
representative legislators; and moral debts arising from disparities in what society should do
because it is right and what society actually does. Like fiscal debts and deficits, educational debts
are the sum of educational deficits. Ladson-Billings compares these deficits to the achievement
gap. The overall debt does not decrease merely by focusing on the deficit, so the mindset must
switch from a focus on the achievement gap to one on opportunity gaps. This reframes the
emphasis from student deficits to institutional actions.
These opportunity gaps, in turn, become gaps in college readiness for Latinx students.
Conley (2007) defined college readiness as the need to enroll in remedial education. More
broadly, though, college readiness is associated with cognitive, non-cognitive, and campus-
integration factors (Almeida, 2015a; Duncheon, 2015). Cognitive factors include academic
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 9
preparation, such as in reading and math (Almeida, 2015b), whereas non-cognitive factors would
include mindsets and behaviors, such as study skills (Duncheon, 2015). Campus-integration
factors include relationships with others on campus and college knowledge, such as
understanding financial aid and admissions processes. However, typically, researchers only
measure cognitive factors such as test scores. So, while studies show that race and
socioeconomic status are related to National Assessment of Educational Progress math scores
and other standardized tests scores (Strayhorn, 2014), this does not account for non-cognitive
and campus-integration factors.
According to Welner and Carter (2013), many selective institutions of higher education
across the United States compete over the limited pool of Black and Latinx high school
graduates who are college-ready (that is, eligible to begin college without remediation).
Unfortunately, a clear majority of Black and Latinx high school graduates are never adequately
prepared to attend these selective institutions. The authors credit the problem of Black and
Latinx low college attendance rates and lack of college readiness to the “ongoing salience of
racial, ethnic, and class inequalities in American society and education” (Welner & Carter, 2013,
p. 5).
Each year, more than 2.5 million students graduate from public high schools in the
United States (Kirst & Bracco, 2004). Over 70% of these graduates enter higher education within
two years and over half of those seek a bachelor’s degree. From this 70%, over 50% will be
required to enroll in remedial courses, with many enrolling in several subjects. Unfortunately, a
large percentage of these students do not persist to a second year of college, and 41% who earn
more than 10 credits at a college or university never complete a 2- or 4-year degree (Kirst &
Bracco, 2004). The National Conference of State Legislators (n.d.) found that low-income,
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 10
Latinx and Black students are more likely to need remediation than their middle- and upper-class
White peers and that 41% of Hispanic students and 42% of Black students require remediation,
compared to 31% of White students. Unfortunately, Black and Latinx students are more likely to
take remedial coursework nationally and, thus, career readiness interventions disproportionately
impact these students (Castro, 2013). Levin and Calcagno (2008) refer to this large number of
non-college-ready students entering postsecondary institutions as a “remediation crisis” (p. 181).
Postsecondary education is important to achieving several of the United States
government’s goals (Castro, 2013), but there are several shortcomings when considering the
transition from K-12 to higher education. On average, recent high school graduates do not tend
to be college-ready, with only 23% of students prepared to take college-level courses without
remediation (Strayhorn, 2014). Thus, there is a need to both increase the number of individuals
who enter college as college-ready and the number of individuals with college degrees, meaning
they are prepared to succeed in college-level coursework or in the workforce (Cline et al., 2007).
However, there is a discrepancy in what “college readiness” means at the secondary and
postsecondary level:
As educators struggle with the conceptual differences between college readiness vs.
college eligibility, instructors at all levels are realizing there needs to be a stronger
alignment between what high schools teach and the skills and knowledge universities
expect entering students to have mastered. (Kirst & Bracco, 2004, p. 31)
In recent efforts to establish a K-16 transition, there is a lack of information when it comes to
students, K-12, and postsecondary educators understanding each other’s college readiness
expectations and, as such, mutual goals become a hindrance (Michaels et al., 2011). Based on
current research, 44% of higher education faculty believe students are prepared for college-level
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 11
writing, compared to only 10% of secondary school teachers who believe the same (Levin &
Calcagno, 2008).
Statement of the Problem
This study addresses the problem of the disproportionate number of minoritized students
who are not college-ready at elite institutions in the United States. College readiness is
traditionally defined as beginning college without requiring remediation, but includes cognitive,
non-cognitive, and campus-integration factors (Duncheon, 2015). The fact that the least-ready
students tend to be African American or Latinx and from low socioeconomic status (Castro,
2013; Welner & Carter, 2013) demonstrates that this is a problem and that it is defined by race.
The evidence highlights that White students and some Asian students perform better on
standardized tests than African American and Latinx students and are more class-prepared
(Strayhorn, 2014). The problem is important to address because college education helps increase
lifetime income (Johansen & Arano, 2016), quality of life (Winters, 2011) and psychic income,
or non-material contributions to one’s life satisfaction (Becker, 2015).
K-12 education under-prepares Black and Latinx students for college compared to their
White and Asian peers (Castro, 2013; Duncheon, 2015; Rodríguez, 2015; Strayhorn, 2014).
Opportunity gaps in K-12 education lead to college readiness gaps for these students (Ladson-
Billings, 2006; Milner, 2010, 2012). One form of opportunity and social capital is college
knowledge (Almeida, 2015b), which is not evenly distributed in the United States. Furthermore,
misinformation about college is widespread among high school students, especially first-
generation and low-income students, and their parents (Tierney & Duncheon, 2015). At highly
selective institutions, these gaps are further heightened (Kim, Rennick, & Franco, 2014).
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 12
Duncheon (2015) defined college readiness specifically as “the preparation required to
enroll in college and persist to graduation without need for remediation” (p. 25), but also
discussed the cognitive, non-cognitive, and campus-integration factors that encompass college
readiness. Minoritized students who are more likely to need remedial education face fewer
chances of obtaining a college degree (Bastedo & Gumport, 2003). Per Duncheon (2015), low-
income students and students of color are far less likely to enroll in college. Once these students
do enroll, they are far less likely to complete college and more likely to dropout (Cline, Bissell,
Hafner, & Katz, 2007). Many Latinx students are seeing gains in postsecondary education
access, but there remain wide discrepancies. For example, they are less than half as likely to
graduate from college as White students (Rueda, 2005). Being less college-ready has real
impacts on students (Rodríguez, 2015). Specifically, these students have several fiscal impacts.
For example, remedial coursework is not credit-bearing toward transfer or graduation, so
students pay for the cost of additional coursework. Moreover, these students are more likely to
enroll part-time, meaning they are less eligible for federal aid in the form of grants and loans.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this qualitative study was to illuminate the voices of underserved and
underprivileged students related to issues of college readiness, specifically those who identify as
Latinx, to inform K-12 and higher education practice. In addition, this study explored what
strategies these students used to be college-ready and attend a highly selective institution of
higher education. Interviewing current undergraduate students at a large, private research
institution in the American Southwest, the researcher uncovered their perceptions of what
methods these students used to overcome institutional barriers to success. By interviewing
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 13
current students, the researcher identified tools current practitioners, such as high school
counselors and college advisors, can use to prepare their students for success.
The study used a qualitative methodology because it provides “rich, thick description”
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 256). The researcher utilized a purposeful selection of students who
identify as Latinx, attend a highly selective institution of higher education, and who overcame
institutional obstacles to achieve success. The researcher used critical race theory as a conceptual
framework to focus on counter-storytelling, illuminating these students’ experiences through
their own perspectives and words (Soló rzano & Yosso, 2001). Moreover, the researcher used
critical race theory to place race at the center of college readiness issues, understanding that
college readiness is itself a racialized problem. Using this, the researcher sought to inform K-12
on practices that can enhance college readiness for Latinx students and inform higher education
practitioners on the experiences these students bring with them into the classroom. The research
questions guiding the study are:
1. In what ways do first-generation Latinx college students at a highly selective institution
define and articulate their own understanding of college readiness as it relates to their
current college experience?
2. What are the perspectives of first-generation Latinx college students at a highly selective
institution of higher education on how college readiness has influenced their behaviors,
actions, and engagement in college?
Significance of the Study
While the research on college readiness is vast, qualitative research using student
interviews is scarce. The voices of these students are thus silenced or ignored. At the time of this
writing, Reid and Moore’s (2008) work was the only published work identified that used this
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 14
methodology to consider issues of college readiness. Moreover, none of the current works
identified take a qualitative perspective in terms of students at highly selective institutions of
higher education. The researcher intended to use this work to add these students’ voices to the
literature. While the college readiness and remediation literature focuses largely on public
institutions and community colleges, this research considers the under-researched population of
minoritized students at highly selective private institutions because these students face specific
hurdles to access and success in elite institutions. Using student perspectives and experiences,
the researcher aimed to inform practice for both K-12 educators and administrators and higher
education faculty, staff, and administrators.
Limitations and Delimitations
Despite using rigorous qualitative methods, this study still had several limitations. First,
concepts of college readiness vary (Kirst & Bracco, 2004). The researcher’s specific definition of
this phrase may differ from concepts presented in other works. For example, Duncheon (2015)
focused on cognitive, non-cognitive, and campus-integration factors, whereas Conley (2007)
defined it more narrowly as “the level of preparation a student needs to enroll and succeed—
without remediation—in a credit-bearing general education course at a postsecondary institution”
(p. 5). This research used Duncheon’s concepts (see definitions below). Second, this study was
cross-sectional rather than longitudinal. Cross-sectional designs are frequently used in qualitative
research (Bryman, 2006). However, because students had to reflect on past experiences, current
experiences may have biased students’ recollections. Third, to ease issues of access, this study
was restricted to one site versus various sites. Additionally, given the small sample size, the
concepts from this research may not generalize to all scenarios and all types of institutions.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 15
The researcher employed several methods to ensure validity and reliability in the study.
First, to make-up for the cross-sectional nature of the design, he used several types of questions
that helped students reflect specifically on their experiences (Patton, 1987). For example, in
addition to questions about opinions, the researcher asked students specific questions in an
attempt to place the student in the form of an observer as they recalled their past experiences.
Second, the researcher employed descriptions of rich data to the most information about the
contexts and participants (Maxwell, 2013). Though qualitative research is criticized for not being
able generalizable, qualitative methods were chosen because they illuminate cases and can
provide in-case and theoretical generalizability (Ali & Yusof, 2011). Additionally, as a
dissertation, this work underwent regular expert review from faculty advisors (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). Moreover, the author wrote this dissertation alongside another student examining
similar research questions with different cases. This method provides appropriate peer
examination, which can further help with issues of trustworthiness in the work (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016).
Definition of Terms
Achievement gaps are the discrepancies in educational outcomes between primarily White and
some Asian students and underserved populations (Howard, 2010).
College knowledge is “understanding the procedural requirements and cultural expectations of
college” (Duncheon, 2015, p. 9).
Counter-storytelling is “a method of telling the stories of those people whose experiences are
not often told” and those whose stories are often not heard (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 26)
Critical Race Theory grew from legal studies (Ladson-Billings, 1998) and problematizes
oppressive systems and how they impact students (Milner, 2013). It posits that racism is normal
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 16
in the United States; emphasizes counter-storytelling to give voice to the underprivileged;
critiques traditional liberalism; and that White people have been the largest benefactors of civil
rights legislation (Ladson-Billings, 1998).
Cultural capital is the well of knowledge and non-financial social assets children receive from
their parents and other socialization agents (Strayhorn, 2010). Cultural capital resources are “a
powerful predictor of achievement” (Strayhorn, 2010, p. 309).
Highly selective institutions of higher education are not easily defined. For example, Astin and
Oseguera (2004) defined the top 10% of ranked institutions as “highly selective.” This study
defines highly selective institutions as those that admit far smaller proportions of students than
apply. Student selectivity plays a significant role in U.S. News & World Report rankings of
colleges and universities; so, more selective institutions are thus more likely to be highly ranked
(Gladwell, 2011).
Latinx is used in this dissertation as a gender inclusive term, replacing Latino/a.
Least-ready students are those who place at least three levels below transfer-ready in English or
math at a 2-year college (Rodríguez, 2015).
Minoritized groups are those groups that may not represent a numerical minority but, due to
racism and historical and institutional oppression, dominant groups still exclude minoritized
individuals (Chase, Dowd, Pazich, & Bensimon, 2014).
Opportunity gaps are the gaps present between the access to quality education and resources
schools have to ensure all students are academically successful (Milner, 2010, 2012).
Remediation is coursework retaken or prepare students for further college-level classwork
(Bettinger & Long, 2009).
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 17
Social capital is “access to and use of resources embedded in social networks” (Lin, 1999, p.
30).
Student Agency is the “concept that students should be in control of their educational decisions
rather than following a prescribed path determined by others” (Zimmerman, 2015, p. 21).
Organization of the Study
After this introductory chapter, four chapters follow. The second chapter includes a
review of the pertinent literature. The third chapter further elaborates the research methodology
(Maxwell, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). These three chapters composed the proposal for the
dissertation. The final two chapters elaborate on the research findings and provide a discussion
of and implications for the results.

COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 18
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
2

Quantitative college readiness research dominates the literature, whereas few researchers
use qualitative methods to examine college readiness. The works of Reid and Moore (2008) and
Byrd and MacDonald (2005), however, are two such works that do. Yet, none of the current
works found consider college readiness from a qualitative perspective in terms of students at
highly selective institutions of higher education. This study’s intent was to use this work to add
these students’ voices to the literature. Therefore, by illuminating the voices of underserved and
underprivileged students related to issues of college readiness, specifically those who identify as
Latinx, this study sought to inform researchers and practitioners on various perspectives of how
students become college-ready and attend a highly selective institution of higher education and
will inform K-12 and higher education practices on college readiness.
K-12 education under-prepares Latinx students for college compared to their White and
Asian American peers (Castro, 2013; Duncheon, 2015; Rodríguez, 2015; Strayhorn, 2014). From
this, the opportunity gaps that exist in K-12 education lead to college readiness gaps for these
students (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Milner, 2010, 2012). Moreover, at highly selective institutions,
these gaps are further heightened (Kim et al., 2014). Using student perspectives and experiences
will inform practice for both K-12 educators and administrators and higher education faculty,
staff, and administrators.
Two research questions guided this study:

2
Chapters One, Two, and Three were co-authored by Joshua Watson (degree candidate for the EdD in Educational
Leadership at the University of Southern California; watsonjd@usc.edu), however several revisions were made for
the final dissertation solely by the author of this dissertation.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 19
1. In what ways do first-generation Latinx college students at a highly selective institution
define and articulate their own understanding of college readiness as it relates to their
current college experience?
2. What are the perspectives of first-generation Latinx college students at a highly selective
institution of higher education on how college readiness has influenced their behaviors,
actions, and engagement in college?
These research questions guided and provided a greater understanding of how Latinx students
perceive and articulate college readiness. Furthermore, they were designed to provide context
and strategies on how secondary and postsecondary institutions can bridge the discourse on how
college readiness is defined, perceived, and implemented.
Defining college readiness is difficult, though most researchers agree it is a constellation
of non-cognitive and cognitive factors (Duncheon, 2015). There are several differences in how
researchers define college readiness, however. An example of this difference is Duncheon’s
(2015) focus on cognitive, non-cognitive, and campus-integration factors, whereas Conley
(2007) defined college readiness more narrowly as “the level of preparation a student needs to
enroll and succeed—without remediation—in a credit-bearing general education course at a
postsecondary institution” (p. 5). This study will use Duncheon’s (2015) broader
operationalization of college readiness, including factors outside of remediation alone. As for
college readiness gaps, Duncheon (2015) defined them as the need to enroll in remedial
education, as these gaps are linked to a lower likelihood of graduating from college.
The education field has moved from discussing “achievement gaps” to discussing
“opportunity gaps” in education (Milner, 2010). Whereas the achievement gap rhetoric focused
on student deficits, opportunity gaps focus largely on inequitable systems. Opportunity gaps in
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 20
college readiness largely impact Latinx students (Duncheon, 2015). This chapter provides a
historical background on college readiness, remediation, and institutional discrepancies to build a
greater understanding on how the issue has disproportionately affected minoritized students, or
students from underrepresented and underserved backgrounds, at highly selective institutions of
higher education. Though the research cited includes studies about Black and Latinx students,
this dissertation specifically looked at the experiences of Latinx students. The readings may offer
a broader understanding of the problem than applies specifically to the population in this study.
The next two sections focus on the current state of college readiness and its important
constructs for minoritized students. In the current state of college readiness section, literature
focuses on college readiness in the 21st century; opportunity gaps, remediation, and
preparedness; college readiness policies, programs and supports; college completion for
minoritized students; and Black and Latinx students at highly selective institutions. Literature in
the important constructs of college readiness for minoritized students section focuses on
achievement gaps to opportunity gaps, college readiness and remediation, social and cultural
capital; and student agency.
The last section of this chapter presents this study’s theoretical framework. Literature in
the theoretical framework section covers community cultural wealth. Thereafter, a summary of
the literature findings pertaining to college readiness, gaps, and other notable themes conclude
this chapter.
History of the College Readiness for Minoritized Students
College readiness is a newer phenomenon in the overall structure of American higher
education (Almeida, 2015b). However, secondary and postsecondary institutions have been at
odds with how college readiness should be delivered. More recently, an emphasis has been
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 21
placed on remediation and shifting the focus of college readiness from 4-year institutions to high
schools and 2-year higher education institutions (Bastedo & Gumport, 2003). Unfortunately,
these college readiness policies have disproportionately affected minoritized students (Castro,
2013).
Historical Background of Remediation and College Readiness
One of the earliest forms of remediation existed 1871 when Charles Eliot, Harvard’s
president at the time, noted how entering students lacked skills in the fundamentals of spelling,
punctuation, and writing (Casazza, 1999). These concerns led the university to provide additional
assistance to prepare incoming students for college-level courses. Thereafter, by the early
twentieth century, more than 350 colleges across the nation began offering supplemental courses
for students deemed underprepared for the academic rigors of college. With this historical
anecdote, it can be understood that remediation in higher education is not a new phenomenon.
The term “college readiness” did not enter the literature until March 1948 when colleges
began to condemn high schools for ill-preparing secondary school students for the rigors, work
habits, and overall quality of preparation to persist in college (Almeida, 2015b). Prior to the
term, “curriculum articulation” (Wheat, 1948) was used for secondary and higher education.
Articulation was “the close coupling of courses and educational experiences in a sequential
manner for the purpose of obtaining continuity of student development” (Wheat, 1948, p. 147).
However, curriculum articulation did not address cognitive and non-cognitive factors pertinent to
college readiness.
While cognitive and non-cognitive factors are significant to college readiness (Duncheon,
2015), the earliest programs and policies focused solely on cognitive factors (Almeida, 2015a).
Cognitively, institutions considered reading and mathematics especially important. Reading
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 22
became more important as colleges moved toward survey courses in the 1800s. This emphasis
emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because of the shift away from emphasizing
Greek and Latin language requirements in universities. Additionally, universities began to
embrace the Germanic tradition of emphasizing research by expanding access to libraries. These
combined phenomena resulted in faculty starting to focus more largely on their students’ entry-
level writing skills. Institutions of higher education started to create departments specifically to
prepare students for college-level writing. The University of California, Berkeley, a highly
selective institution, was the first to implement such a program. While mathematics was always
important to early universities in the United States, Yale was the first institution to include
mathematics on its entrance exams in 1745. Mathematics’ importance to college readiness
increased exponentially with the rise of the Industrial Revolution and the Morrill Land Grant Act
of 1862. As access to higher education expanded because of the land grant missions, institutions
began to focus more heavily on entry-level mathematics preparation. There was an additional
surge during the Cold War (Almeida, 2015b).
Practitioners and researchers began to realize the importance of non-cognitive factors,
like study skills or mindsets (e.g., growth mindsets), to college readiness in the early to mid-20th
century (Almeida, 2015b). The Scholastic Aptitude Test’s (SAT) creators recognized the test
could only be a supplement and lamented the dangers of using it as the only consideration of
college readiness. During this time, psychologists also started to understand the role that certain
non-cognitive habits of mind played in college readiness. More recently, researchers have
associated grit, a construct that that encompasses “perseverance and passion toward long-term
goals” (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007, p. 1087), with success in high school
and college (Duckworth & Seligman, 2012). The emphasis of non-cognitive factors, such as
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 23
mindsets and behaviors, has grown in importance over the past decades, though researchers still
disagree on its place (Duncheon, 2015).
College Readiness Perspectives of Secondary and Postsecondary Institutions
There was a tension in the mid-20th century about who was responsible for college
readiness efforts (Almeida, 2015a). During the 1940’s, college educators began to criticize high
schools for not focusing on college readiness while, on the other hand, high school teachers
indicated secondary students were not ready to undergo the academic rigors of postsecondary
institutions (Almeida, 2015a). Secondary education has steadily become more responsible for
preparing students for college. To this extent, there needs to be a more secure alignment between
what is taught in high school and the knowledge and skills postsecondary institutions expect
incoming students to have mastered (Kirst & Bracco, 2004).
Access to higher education has expanded for students of color, but college readiness
programs and policies still affect them disproportionately (Duncheon, 2015). After the passage of
both compulsory secondary education across the United States and the California Master Plan for
Higher Education of 1960 that made community college universally available to California
residents, access to higher education has grown dramatically (Rodríguez, 2015). However, issues
of tracking and re-segregation still adversely affect students of color excessively (Almeida,
2015b). Unfortunately, many of the least-prepared students, who are more likely to be
minoritized students, are still unable to earn degrees because of issues related to college
preparedness (Rodríguez, 2015).
Michaels et al. (2011) suggested that assessment is a critical element of education at
every level, while Brown and Conley (2007) applied systems coherence theories (Fuhrman,
2001) as a conceptual approach for examining the information asymmetry between K-12 and
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 24
postsecondary educators. The theories of systems coherence posit, “By creating more explicit
connection between local educational systems and state standards, superior learning will result”
(Brown & Conley, 2007, p. 138). The researchers noted that the “lack of shared knowledge about
assessment at each level makes it difficult for secondary and postsecondary institutions to
develop cohesive academic communities that are able to use assessment to align student
achievement standards” (Michaels et al., 2011, p. 16). To this point, there is little being done at
institutions of secondary and postsecondary education to factor in how the battery of tests adhere
or align to common standards (Michaels et al., 2011).
Student Proficiency & Remedial Education
At the end of the 19th century, the first non-credit-bearing remedial writing program
emerged at the University of California, Berkeley, as a means and need to remediate the
proficiency of students before enrolling them in college-level courses (Almeida, 2015a). In the
late 1990s, Massachusetts significantly reduced the number of students allowed to enroll in
remedial education, with community colleges becoming the site of remedial education (Bastedo
& Gumport, 2003). Over time, the proportion of minority students has slightly increased, so there
is not extensive analysis of the impact. In 1995, political pressure in New York led to a
remediation plan where most students requiring remediation were referred to community
colleges or night schools, eventually eliminating remediation from senior colleges. The
immediate impact here is also unclear, but the long-term impact is likely going to increase
stratification, even though overall minority profiles have been stable. This may result from The
City University of New York’s summer immersions and dual enrollment programs. However,
there has been a significant decrease in English Language Learner students.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 25
Although remedial education has been prevalent for over a century, nowadays it seems to
be primarily for students of color. For instance, Black and Latinx students are more likely to take
remedial coursework nationally and as a result, college and career readiness interventions
disproportionately affect them (Castro, 2013). In addition, low-income students and students of
color are far less likely to enroll in college, and once in college, are less likely to graduate with a
degree (Duncheon, 2015). As community colleges take on more responsibility for remedial
education, minoritized students who are more likely to need this education face fewer chances of
getting a degree (Bastedo & Gumport, 2003). This leads to questions about whether access to the
system as a whole equals access to the whole system. It appears it does not.
Current State of College Readiness
As postsecondary education attainment is important to achieving several of the nation’s
goals, there are shortcomings when considering the educational pipeline. A cornerstone of higher
education policy in the United States is ensuring equality of opportunity and access for all people
(Bastedo & Gumport, 2003). Understanding that there is a great deal of research on achievement
gaps, achievement gaps have been reframed by some as gaps in opportunity for students because,
whereas achievement gaps focus on student deficits, opportunity gaps focus on systemic gaps in
opportunity for students (Milner, 2012). Furthermore, issues of college readiness and gaps in
opportunity are greater for Black and Latinx students at highly selective institutions of higher
education.
College Readiness in the 21st Century
College readiness is a term used throughout the United States as a way of ensuring that
high school students are prepared with the knowledge, skills, and capacity to qualify and succeed
at a postsecondary institution without remediation (Conley, 2007). While remediation is
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 26
designed to aid students in achieving expected competencies in fundamental academic skills such
as mathematics and academic literacy, the large number of underprepared students entering
postsecondary institutions has created a “remediation crisis” (Levin & Calcagno, 2008, p. 181).
Although students are entering college with a high school diploma, Levin and Calcagno (2008)
found that many student enter college unprepared for college-level coursework in reading,
writing, and mathematics. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and the
Southern Regional Education Board (2010) found that nearly 60% of first-year college students
are not academically ready for college-level work, despite being eligible to enroll in college.
Recent high school graduates do not tend to be college-ready on average, with only 23%
of students ready to enroll in college-level courses without remediation (Strayhorn, 2014).
Strayhorn (2014) conducted a study to identify factors that influence college readiness for
students from historically marginalized at 4-year colleges and universities. He found that first-
generation students, who are more likely to be minoritized students, scored lower than non-first-
generation students across several indicators. White and Asian students scored much higher than
Black, Latinx, and Native Americans on standardized tests. White students scored better than
Black, Latinx, and multiracial students in class preparation. Students in the highest
socioeconomic status quartile scored higher than all other students on reading and college
readiness in general. This study is useful toward this investigation because the framework
utilized in the Strayhorn study only contributed 30% to college readiness, finding that 70% was
unknown and leaves open room for expansion of the framework itself in its discussion and
implications. Student voices could contribute to enlightening on this unknown factor toward
contributing to college readiness.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 27
Opportunity Gaps, Remediation and Preparedness
Low-income and minority students typically have unmet needs in attending college. One
of these unmet needs is financial dependence. At highly selective private institutions of higher
education, low-income students pay greater proportions of their family income to attend college
(Dezhbakhsh & Karikari, 2010). Some practices, such as early admission and increases in merit-
based aid, have disadvantaged low-income students who may seek to “shop-around” for financial
aid packages or may lack opportunity to earn merit-based aid. However, some colleges are
beginning to replace loans in their packages with grant aid, which could benefit low-income and
minority students. Unfortunately, as family income decreases, the likelihood that a student
attends a highly selective private college decreases as compared to a public college (Dezhbakhsh
& Karikari, 2010). Students with lower expected family contributions, a number that decides a
student’s eligibility for federal student aid, on their Free Application for Federal Student Aid
(FAFSA) are less likely to attend highly selective private colleges, thus creating a lack of
opportunity. For undocumented college applicants and for the applicants who are U.S. citizens
with undocumented parents, financial aid raises technical issues (Olivas, 2009). Undocumented
students are generally ineligible for federal financial aid as well as state aid. Even naturalized
college applicants face administrative and technical issues in navigating the often-perplexing
federal financial aid application process. Research suggests that undocumented students are often
“trapped by imprecise definitions and applications of immigration categories among financial aid
regulation, statutory immigration terms, and Internal Revenue Code provisions” (Olivas, 2009, p.
413).
Students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and who identify as minorities are
overrepresented in higher education remedial course-taking (Attewell, Lavin, Domina, & Levey,
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 28
2006). This illustrates the lack of opportunity that causes students from underserved
communities (first-generation, low-income, students of color) to be more likely to have to take
remedial coursework and be less likely to graduate from college, which has an important impact
on the cycle of poverty because they are ill-prepared for many careers requiring post-secondary
training. Specifically, Black and Latinx students are more likely to take remedial coursework
nationally (Castro, 2013) with 41% of Latinx students and 42% of Black students placed into
remediation, compared to 31% of White students (Levin & Calcagno, 2008). As a result, they are
greatly affected by college and career readiness interventions (Castro, 2013).
Remedial higher education is largely relegated to community colleges, leaving
minoritized students who are more likely to need this education with fewer chances of obtaining
a college degree (Bastedo & Gumport, 2003). Bettinger and Long (2009) posited that the large
volume of remediation is administered by non-selective public institutions, which is the gateway
for 80% of 4-year students and, ultimately, all 2-year students. Four-fifths of 4-year public
institutions and 98% of 2-year colleges provide remedial courses. In addition, remedial
coursework is not credit-bearing toward transfer or graduation, yet still costs students money,
and students must often pay for these courses out of pocket (Rodríguez, 2015). According to
Rodríguez (2015), students in remedial education tend to be part-time, more likely to be non-
traditional (over the age of 25), more likely to be Black or Latinx and far less likely to complete
transfer-level coursework. Moreover, because these students are more likely to be part-time, they
are often not eligible for financial aid in the form of grants or federal loans. These non-academic
challenges only compound the academic challenges the students already face (Rodríguez, 2015).
Many students of color generally do not enter postsecondary institutions equipped with
the academic rigor or work ethic that prepares them for the expectations of instructors or course
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 29
requirements (Almeida, 2015b; Conley, 2007; Levin & Calcagno, 2008; Reid & Moore, 2008).
Advocates of remediation suggest that the remedial courses help these underprepared students
gain the skills necessary to persist in college (Soliday, 2002). However, the absence of
information like admissions requirement is also a problem because many high school students
may not understand the academic preparation needed to succeed in college (Secondary and
Higher Education Remediation Advisory Commission, 1997). Most postsecondary educators
expect incoming students to have high levels of critical thinking skills, including to infer and
interpret data and results, analyze sources, support arguments with evidence, conduct research,
and think deeply. Postsecondary courses require that students be independent, self-reliant
learners who understand that they should seek support from instructors, their colleagues, or other
sources if they are facing difficulties (National Research Council, 2002). In these courses,
students will be expected to write multiple short studys that must be articulate, well-structured,
and supported with evidence (National Survey of Student Engagement, 2006). Furthermore, the
National Survey of Student Engagement reports that the clear majority of first-year college
students are also expected to work with their peers in and out of the classroom on complex
problems and projects and thereafter must present on their group findings. Research reports that
44% of higher education faculty believe that students are underprepared for the academic rigors
of postsecondary-level writing (Michaels et al., 2011). Therefore, it is critical to ensure that
students, especially underserved and underrepresented students, are entering college equipped
with the academic rigors of what will be expected of them from the postsecondary institution(s)
in which they attend.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 30
College Readiness Policies, Programs, and Supports
States have implemented diverse college readiness initiatives, producing a patchwork of
policies not easily generalized (Blume & Zumeta, 2014). The 1980s brought several policies that
decreased access to higher education for underrepresented and minoritized students (Mumper,
2003). Tuition rose, federal student aid changed, and affirmative admissions policies declined as
ways to create disadvantages for these students. Currently, these state policies take on one of
four general types (Blume & Zumeta, 2014): advanced coursework (an emphasis on honors and
Advanced Placement [AP] classes), academic readiness (an emphasis on advanced coursework
and dual enrollment), statewide assessment emphasis (an emphasis on dual enrollment and
statewide assessments), or low policy effort related to college readiness.
States with low policy effort tend to cluster in the northeastern United States where there
is better college readiness in general or in states with laissez-faire policy emphases. Dual
enrollment and AP courses allow high school students to earn college credit. Statewide
assessments include tests to measure student achievement in academic areas such as
mathematics, writing, and reading. Two major policies targeting high schools are the College for
All curriculum and college readiness assessments (Duncheon, 2015). The College for All
curriculum movement seeks to provide a college preparatory curriculum to all students. Twenty-
one states require college preparatory course-taking, as do many other school districts that have
standard curricula. Assessments are meant to provide early indicators of college readiness,
typically aligned through federal standards. However, these policies’ effect on college readiness
is not yet fully understood.
Several states implemented policies that could work to help or hinder college readiness.
California’s Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960 was an early entrant (Rodríguez, 2015).
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 31
While this made community college universally available and created a tiered system of access
(with community colleges being open-access, California State Universities being selective, and
University of California campuses being highly selective), it continued to disenfranchise the
least-prepared students, who are more likely to come from underrepresented backgrounds,
because of poor transfer preparedness. Similarly, the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education
moved most remedial education from 4-year colleges to community colleges in the 1990s,
creating strong mission differentiation among institutions (Bastedo & Gumport, 2003). While the
proportion of minority students at senior colleges in the state increased, some question if this will
lead to further stratification. New York’s City University of New York system has a strong
Honors Program which some have argued will lead to inequitable social hierarchies; however, as
money flowed to these programs, some has helped create scholarships for minority students.
There has not been extensive research on the long-term impact of the program.
In Illinois, the state legislature tasked community colleges with closing the readiness gap
(Castro, 2013). Five Illinois community colleges were charged with developing interventions for
students still in high school. The effectiveness of these interventions was analyzed using
Conley’s (2007) framework. However, Castro (2013) pointed out that, because of the college
readiness equity gap, this framework was likely unable to be fully effective in examining these
programs because it does not take racialized concepts of college readiness into account. This
connects to this study, in which the selection of a highly selective institutions of higher education
extends the discussion of college readiness to the idea that the rhetoric does not focus on
inequities and opportunity gaps and presses for a model of measuring college and career
readiness that accounts for institutionalized racism.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 32
College Completion for Minoritized Students
Those who arrive to college academically underprepared are more likely to dropout
(Michaels et al., 2011). The embarrassment students with deficiencies may feel can lead to
reduced educational outcomes. Cline et al. (2007) posited that, as more low-socioeconomic-
status and underrepresented students attend college, they often have difficulties meeting strict
college readiness requirements in their first year and require remedial courses for a year or more.
Furthermore, they addressed how the concept of college readiness focuses on making sure
students are prepared to succeed in college-level academia or in the workforce, rather than just
fulfilling the institution’s eligibility requirements. Some practices at highly selective institutions
of higher education, such as early admission and increases in merit-based aid, have
disadvantaged low-income students who may seek to “shop-around” for financial aid packages
or may lack opportunity to earn merit-based aid (Dezhbakhsh & Karikari, 2010). However, some
highly selective institutions are beginning to replace loans in their packages with grant aid,
which could benefit low-income and minority students.
Low-income students and students of color are far less likely to enroll in college than
their White and Asian American counterparts. The college attainment gap for minoritized
students has remained largely unchanged or even worsened in the past decade (The Campaign
for College Opportunity, 2013). Once in college, these students are less likely to graduate
(Duncheon, 2015). Unfortunately, placement in remedial coursework typically increases the time
to degree and decreases the likelihood of degree completion (Michaels et al., 2011). Many of
these students do not persist to a second year of college and 41% who earn at least 10 credits
never complete a degree (Kirst & Bracco, 2004). The United States Department of Education
discovered that 58% of students who do not need remediation receive a bachelor’s degree,
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 33
compared to only 17% of students registered in remedial reading courses and 27% of students
registered in remedial math courses (Bautsch, 2013).
According to the Campaign for College Opportunity (2013), Black students have the
lowest completion rates for transfer and freshman students at all three California higher
education segments. The findings in this report also indicate that Black students are more likely
to start college and not finish than any other ethnic group. As a result, in 2012, more Black
students were enrolled at for-profit institutions than at any California State University system
and University of California system school combined. As a result, over the last decade, the gap
between Black student and White student bachelor or higher degree attainment has only
decreased by one percentage point. Findings from this report show that, in 2011, about 24% of
Black adults had obtained a bachelor’s degree compared with 41% of White adults. Though far
more of these students are attending these colleges, indicating a college readiness gap, some of
these students still get admitted to and attend highly selective elite institutions.
Black and Latinx Students at Highly Selective Institutions of Higher Education
Latinx students are underrepresented at selective institutions of higher education and
overrepresented at open-access 2-year colleges (Kim et al., 2014) and Black undergraduates are
overrepresented in community colleges and underrepresented in 4-year public and private non-
profit institutions (Bailey, Jenkins, & Leinbach, 2005). Most students who attend these highly
selective private and public colleges are students who come from upper-middle and high-income
families (Dezhbakhsh & Karikari, 2010). Furthermore, students who graduate from these highly
selective private colleges play disproportionate roles in society, such as politicians and business
leaders, and receive unparalleled benefits (Dezhbakhsh & Karikari, 2010), including higher
lifetime incomes (Dale & Krueger, 2002).
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 34
Standardized tests play a growing role in admissions, especially at selective institutions.
However, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) creators recognized that the SAT could only be a
supplement and warned of the dangers of using it as the only consideration of college readiness
(Almeida, 2015a). Moreover, in a study of University of California schools after the
implementation of the state’s Proposition 209 banning affirmative action policies in public
institutions, race neutral admissions processes that rely solely on SAT/ACT and GPA had major
impacts at selective institutions that can no longer achieve pre-Proposition 209 diversity levels
(Koretz, Russell, Shin, Horn, & Shasby, 2002). Because of the opportunity gaps in education,
Black and Latinx students earn lower scores than their White and some Asian American
counterparts on the SAT exam (Howard, 2010), making it less likely they would meet eligibility
requirements at a highly-selective institution.
Howard (2010) found Black and Latinx students are more likely to have poor reading and
mathematics scores, which are indicative of future performance and college entrance.
Additionally, Black and Latinx students are more likely to be retained in secondary education,
resulting in higher likelihood of suspensions and expulsions. Moreover, they are less likely to
graduate, more likely to be referred to special education, and less likely to be placed into
advanced mathematics or AP courses. They are also more likely to underperform on the SAT
exam. In a study of the Gates Millennium Scholarship Program at a highly selective private
university in the Western United States, Melguizo (2010) found that students who participated in
the program scored higher on non-cognitive measures like realistic self-appraisal than their peers
outside of the program. These students are more likely to complete college than their peers,
indicating that college admissions counselors may want to consider these non-cognitive factors
in recruiting and admitting students.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 35
The Gates Millennium program, developed by the Gates Foundation, was a response to
the problem of using only cognitive measures, such as the SAT, in college admission criteria
(Melguizo, 2010). Program leaders believed that including non-cognitive factors would be more
equitable for students of color. Melguizo (2010) found that “low-income minorities with a strong
self-concept, leadership experience, a record of community work, and a history of successfully
overcoming life challenges had graduation rates comparable to those of individuals in the most
selective institutions” (p. 239). These students are also more likely to complete college than their
minoritized peers at other less-selective institutions (Melguizo, 2008). Noting the
underrepresentation of Black and Latinx students at selective institutions of higher education and
the impacts of standardized testing in the admissions process at these elite institutions, literature
reveals the disproportionate number of minoritized students within these campuses who are not
college-ready. The next section focuses on the important constructs of college readiness for
minoritized students.
Important Constructs of College Readiness for Minoritized Students
The rhetoric on achievement gaps has moved to one on opportunity gaps (Milner, 2010).
This framework helps provide a racialized and more equitable understanding of college readiness
(Castro, 2013; Duncheon, 2015). As students enter, matriculate in, and complete college, there
are several social and cultural capital impacts (Becker, 2015; Coleman & Hoffer, 2015; Lamont
& Lareau, 2015).
From Achievement Gaps to Opportunity Gaps
While literature and popular media previously focused on achievement gaps, opportunity
gaps and educational debt mindsets have started to replace the achievement gap rhetoric. The
achievement gap references the educational outcome imbalance between Black, Latinx, and
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 36
Native American students and their White and Asian American peers (Howard, 2010).
Educational debts are, similarly, the resources that should have been, but were not, invested in
low-income students (Ladson-Billings, 2006). The denial of crucial opportunities and resources
for students of color harms their likelihood of attaining life and educational success (Ladson-
Billings, 2013).
Educational debt. Educational debt is a result of historical, economic, sociopolitical, and
moral debts that helps to conceptualize how each of these has had an impact on disparities in
education for underserved populations (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Historical debt results from
years of disparities in education, caused by laws, legal cases, and de facto segregation. Economic
debt arises from funding inequities for underserved students and from lack of opportunities due
to educational attainment for these populations. Sociopolitical debt arises from lack of access to
representative legislators for these populations. Moral debt arises from disparity in what people
know they should do because it is right and what they actually do for these populations.
While these gaps and debts have existed for centuries, policymakers and researchers have
focused more heavily on them in the past 20 to 30 years (Howard, 2010). There are several
outcomes of these gaps. Students receive poorer reading and math scores on standardized tests,
indicative of future issues in gaining college entrance. There is a greater likelihood that these
students will be retained in their grades and have more suspensions and expulsions. There is
lesser likelihood that these students will graduate and a greater likelihood they will be referred to
special education. They are also less likely to be placed in advanced coursework. Additionally,
they tend to earn poorer standardized test scores overall (Howard, 2010). Like educational debts,
opportunity gaps move beyond blaming the victims of these gaps for the disparities in
achievement.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 37
Opportunity gaps. Opportunity gaps are “complicated, process-oriented, and much more
nuanced than achievement” gaps (Milner, 2010, pp. 7–8). The frame of opportunity gaps shifts
the attention from “outcomes to inputs - to the deficiencies in the foundational components of
societies, schools, and communities that produce significant differences in educational and
ultimately socioeconomic outcomes” (Carter et al., 2013, p. 3). Rather than focusing on student
deficits as the term “achievement gap” tends to, opportunity gaps focus on oppressive
institutionalized systems. Milner advanced that all students deserve opportunities to succeed, but
oppressive systems advantage some over others. Similarly, as mentioned, educational debts are
owed to underserved and underrepresented students in education (Ladson-Billings, 2006). These
are moral debts because closing these gaps is a moral imperative. Opportunity gaps, in this sense,
are similar to economic debts, whereas the achievement gap is similar to an economic deficit.
Ladson-Billings argues that closing the achievement gap only reduces the deficit, while still not
impacting the overall debt, so policy and practical decisions must focus on lowering the
educational debt and closing opportunity gaps. Furthermore, Carter et al. (2013) argued that
educational debt arises from a long-term failure to produce equitable conditions and a failure to
address deficits, represented in year-to-year testing.
Opportunity gaps are multifaceted. The opportunity gap framework consists of five
interconnected areas in which educators can bridge opportunity gaps: rejection of color
blindness, understanding of how to navigate cultural conflicts, rejection of the myth of
meritocracy; rejection of low expectations and deficit mindsets, and rejection of context-neutral
mindsets (Milner, 2010).
Color blindness. Teachers that take on color-blind mentalities by believing they “do not
see color” can hinder students’ learning by neglecting important aspects of their background that
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 38
contribute to their understanding and can lead to not appropriately developing learning
opportunities to address these (Milner, 2012). This actually can justify inaction and perpetuate
the status quo. Moreover, with the great demographic disparity between students and teachers,
there is a rising issue. Especially with this widening gap, when White teachers work with
minoritized students and adopt color-blind mentalities, they risk denying students of important
learning opportunities (Howard, 2010). While all teachers can help all students learn, teachers of
color tend to have experiences that allow them better opportunity to connect with and teach
students of color. Moreover, while individual teachers may not be racist, and may see discussing
race as racist itself, this does not negate that broader institutions tend to be racist, and, if they do
not work against these structures, they will persist and continue to prevent student success. Some
direct impacts of these colorblind mentalities include fewer minoritized students in gifted
education (Howard, 2010) and fewer in co-curricular activities (Milner, 2010).
The term “colorblindness” can often be more simply defined as a purposeful silencing of
race words themselves. Pollock (2004) explained how using racial labels in describing people,
such as saying “my White or Black” friend rather than “my friend,” is one of the many pitfalls
inherent in racialization. Pollock further stated how humans “wrestle, for example, with the act
of placing infinitely diverse human beings into simple ‘racial’ boxes; they then wrestle with the
fact that these categories of ‘racial’ difference are central to the most troubling power struggles
we have” (p. 1). This wrestling will ultimately lead to a paradoxical reality for a world with the
existence of racial inequality, both not talking and talking about individuals in racial terms seem
alternately necessary to make things “fair.”
Cultural conflicts. Cultural incongruence between teachers and students can hamper
student learning, especially when teachers operate from their dominant cultural ways of knowing
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 39
(Milner, 2010). In this, students and teachers can work against each other and students will
believe their cultural preferences to be insignificant, perhaps resulting in their refusal to engage
in the classroom. Normalcy is at the core of this, so students must be taught how to be successful
in the classroom and that they live in an oppressive system; the onus, then, is on teachers to
educate students on this. Students must also be prepared to challenge and change these
structures, and teachers are responsible for preparing students in this way. Furthermore,
linguistic and cultural understanding in curriculum, instruction, and classroom behavior prove its
significance in the lives of children who stem from middle-class families and constructs an
appreciation and respect for society’s institutions and dominant culture (Stanton-Salazar, 1997).
Myth of meritocracy. Educators, especially privileged and/or White educators, believe
their and their students’ success has been earned and that failure is also earned as a result of
wrong choices (Milner, 2010). Unearned opportunities, though, are often passed from generation
to generation. These teachers, then, have no concept of how privilege manifests. US society is
built on the idea of the American Dream, that everyone has equal opportunity for success;
however, educational opportunities are neither equal nor equitable. This philosophy, then, rejects
institutional and systemic issues. Stanton-Salazar (1997) argued that the very myth of
meritocracy is purposefully advanced by school systems as a way to maintain and conserve
current educational systems.
Low expectations and deficit mindsets. Those with deficit mindsets see “different” as
deficient (Milner, 2010). This view, paired with low expectations, makes it difficult to develop
meaningful learning opportunities. In these mindsets, culturally diverse students’ backgrounds
are seen as liabilities and students’ strengths are not built upon. These educators often believe
they are doing students a favor when they are not, creating a cycle in which they do not have
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 40
high expectations, students do not learn, and students perform poorly on tests. Solórzano (2000)
specifically identified low expectations as a form of faculty microagression and has found, even
when faced with contrary evidence, faculty tend to maintain these mindsets. These deficit-type
mindsets are more pervasive in educational organizations, where even those who espouse
commitment to diversity may do so through deficit views (Bensimon, 2005). Underlying this
view is that minoritized students must change to adapt to existing systems (Iverson, 2007).
Context-neutral mindsets. Social contexts impact human development and opportunity,
often reinforcing the status quo (Milner, 2012). Context-neutral mindsets, then, do not allow
educators to recognize the realities of their or their students’ contexts. The fact is, urban and
high-poverty schools face many persistent challenges. Educators must understand the overall
context and their local context to create responsive teaching.
Specifically, four arguments underscore the opportunity gap framework and how it
differs from an achievement gap framework. First, it does not compare diverse students with
White students without understanding the disparities between them. Second, it does not frame
White students as the norm. Third, it does not use deficit mindsets to conceptualize students of
color. And, fourth, it focuses on inequitable structures rather than students (Milner, 2012). These
comparisons present White students as the norm, discounting the achievements and struggles of
other racial groups. Out-of-school influences, such as geography, specifically play into
opportunity gaps (Milner, 2013). Particularly, poorer neighborhoods tend to be clustered away
from important resources largely because of a monolithic regime of business leaders who attempt
to serve their own interests. As a result, cities are becoming even poorer while suburbs become
richer (Tate, 2008).
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 41
To close opportunity gaps, there should be a focus on reform at the individual, school,
and district levels, particularly on teaching and instruction. The individual teacher can be a
powerful change-maker in students’ lives. Teachers, however, exist within educational systems.
Holistic reform to these systems will bring about the most transformative and sustainable
changes in students (Milner, 2015). At the individual level, effective teaching occurs when
teachers are more patient with students, increase class rigor and expectations, continue to
dedicate themselves to their work, and communicate more often and more effectively with their
students. Moreover, teachers can learn and understand their students’ lived experiences and
centralize this in their design of curriculum and instruction to strengthen student learning
(Milner, 2013).
Expertise should be located within the students and their families, using their cultural
funds of knowledge as assets. The teacher in a home-based context of learning will be able to
know the child not only as a student, but a whole person. These interactions will yield knowledge
about the multiple spheres of activity in which curriculum is motivated by the child’s interest and
questions (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). This holistic approach is in contrast to the
classroom knowledge children gain that may not be imposed by adults. At the system level,
specific recommendations include reducing class sizes, reforming narrow curricula, practicing
equitable decision-making, and responding to neighborhood conditions (Milner, 2015).
Moreover, teachers, policymakers, and researchers all should use the opportunity gap framework
to frame their decision-making, rather than an achievement gap framework or deficit mindsets
(Milner, 2012). Opportunity gaps are an essential component to this investigation toward
considering the ways race plays into discussions of the relationship of opportunity and student
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 42
performance. This study sought to illuminate student counterstories wherein the intersection of
opportunity, race, and achievement are highlighted.
College Readiness and Remediation
One of the most concrete impacts of opportunity gaps is resulting college readiness gaps.
The college readiness gap ranges from 10% at highly selective 4-year institutions to 60% at non-
selective 2-year colleges (Shulock, 2010). While college readiness is defined in several ways, it
is generally understood as the ability to enroll in college without remedial education (Conley,
2007; Duncheon, 2015); however it includes a constellation of cognitive, non-cognitive, and
campus integration factors (Duncheon, 2015). Racism and meritocracy issues, directly related to
Milner’s (2010) concepts within the opportunity gap framework, are reasons proffered for the
gap in readiness (Arnold, Lu, & Armstrong, 2013), which can be conceptualized in two ways
(Shulock, 2010). The first is the gap between having a high school diploma and being college-
ready and the second is the gap between receiving a college preparatory curriculum and being
college-ready (Shulock, 2010).
These gaps exist for several reasons (Shulock, 2010). First, there are differential
expectations between high schools and colleges, which lead to a disconnect between college
readiness in terms of high school academic preparation and what higher education institutions
expect. Second, there are standardized assessments, such as the PSAT, SAT, and ACT, that do
not measure student attainment of specific college readiness skills. Many states have not created
specific readiness standards, and, among the few that have, the tests have not been specific to the
states’ tailored standards and curriculum. Third, there has been a focus on seat time over
proficiency. According to Shulock (2010), seat time is not an indicator of student knowledge and
ability. Fourth, poor school and teacher accountability contribute to the latter gap. Shulock stated
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 43
that high school accountability systems need focus on increasing college readiness. Furthermore,
Shulock recommended holding high schools more accountable to increasing the rate at which
their graduates enroll in college without the need for remediation. Finally, poor college
accountability to completion rates also contribute to the latter gap. Many state finance and
accountability systems do not monitor or incentivize college completion. Doing so would
encourage colleges to join secondary institutions in comprehensive and systematic endeavors to
monitor, articulate, and improve college readiness fundamentals in math, reading, and writing.
College knowledge is of particular importance to several conceptualizations of college
readiness (Arnold et al., 2013; Duncheon, 2015; Roderick, Nagaoka, & Coca, 2009). Though
researchers and policymakers typically understand readiness as the preparation to start college
without remediation (e.g., Conley, 2007), it goes beyond mere cognitive skills (Duncheon, 2015)
to include non-cognitive academic factors and campus-integration factors. Arnold et al. (2013)
framed college readiness using an ecological model, considering the macrosystem (such as
capitalism and racism), the exosystem (economy and financial aid structures), the mesosystem
(such as educational institutions), the microsystem (such as neighborhoods and individuals), and
the individual (including their age, socioeconomic status, race, and other factors). Conley and
French (2014) considered key cognitive strategies, content knowledge, learning skills, and
transition knowledge (or, thinking, knowing, acting, and going).
As stated, college readiness gaps disproportionately impact minoritized students.
Specifically, Black, Latinx, and Native American students perform, on average, below their
White counterparts on standardized tests (Strayhorn, 2014). Moreover, White students score
better in areas of class preparation than Black and Latinx students. First-generation students
underperform on several indicators when compared to their counterparts. “Least-ready” students,
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 44
those who place at least three levels below transfer-ready in English or math, are more likely to
be Black or Latinx and less likely to complete transfer-level coursework (Rodríguez, 2015).
In addition, first-generation students have several disadvantages in college readiness
compared to their peers, including less assistance from their parents in applying and preparing
for college, less rigorous curricula on average, and poor conceptions of institutional fit (Reid &
Moore, 2008). Poverty has a strong, negative outside-of-school influence on student
opportunities and achievement (Milner, 2013), and minoritized students are more likely than
their White peers to live in poverty. As a result, when students pay for a degree they never earn,
the lifetime economic impacts can be large, continuing to perpetuate this racial stratification.
Social and Cultural Capital
Social and cultural capital can be important constructs in understanding children’s
upbringing and funds of knowledge. Cultural capital refers to the cultural artifacts that positively
impact individuals’ outcomes (Lamont & Lareau, 2015). Social capital, though, resides in the
relationships between individuals and how those relationships can (or cannot) be leveraged for
personal advancement (Coleman & Hoffer, 2015). It derives from students’ relationships and
includes relationships with families, which are especially important, as well as religious
communities and other forms of relationships. For example, a child’s parents’ educational level
can directly impact their success in school and, in turn, affect their readiness for college and
success later in life. Social capital can be used for the advancement of those who have accrued it,
but, often, minoritized students lack the social capital to take advantage of its benefits. Students
with more cultural capital are more likely to attend institutions of higher education or aspire to
attend these institutions (Conley & French, 2014).
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 45
Cultural capital. Pierre Bourdieu (1986) first envisioned the concept of cultural capital
specifically considering differential academic outcomes of children from different social and
cultural backgrounds. Defined as “widely shared, legitimate culture made up of high status
cultural signals (attitudes, preferences, behaviors, and goods) used in direct or indirect social and
cultural exclusion” (Lamont & Lareau, 2015, p. 52), cultural capital theorists posit that schools
typically reflect the dominant social and cultural groups, so students outside of the dominant
groups must learn to adapt to these norms to succeed. Oppositional researchers, however, have
argued that this deficit-based mindset of capital resituates the dominant culture (typically White
middle-class individuals) as the norm while neglecting to recognize the cultural wealth that
Communities of Color possess (Yosso, 2005).
Bourdieu (1986) considered cultural capital hereditary in that it is passed down within the
family. Additionally, his focus was largely on economic means of production. For example, he
postulated that those with economic capital can control means of production, but that they need
cultural capital to use them for their purpose. In educational contexts, he argued, it would follow
that certain cultures are privileged in education and that, for students to receive the best use of
their educational experience, they would need the appropriate and congruent cultural capital of
the majority. Also, while Bourdieu focused heavily on “high-brow” forms of capital such as art,
others have lamented this framing, expanding cultural capital to include more direct applications
to education such as “(i) attitude, interest and preference toward cultural activities; (ii) cultural
knowledge; and (iii) language fluency” (Davies, Qiu, & Davies, 2014, p. 806).
Social capital. Social capital is a collective capital that is bestowed by networks to
people typically as part of membership in a group (Bourdieu, 1986). Group membership, then,
bestows certain capital. Social capital exists when one can use these relationships for personal
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 46
advancement and enhancement (Coleman & Hoffer, 2015). Coleman (1988) offers several major
types of social capital. Information channels are relationships in which information passes from
one person to another. This could include high school students trying to get information about
college-going. Norms are another form of social capital, in that it can facilitate certain actions.
Norms of high expectations in school can be a powerful form of social capital. Appropriable
social organizations are those that can work to advocate for individuals, even those who may
lack personal capital to advocate themselves. While Coleman offered several other forms of
capital, these are some of the most important to understanding college readiness in this study.
Social capital can be related to cultural capital in some ways, as the family too can be a
group that confers social capital (Coleman & Hoffer, 2015). As a matter of fact, for children, the
family is one of the strongest group memberships that imparts social capital. As a result, family
capital (e.g., parental education) can affect students’ outcomes. Parents with higher levels of
education may be more able to provide academic support which can have an impact on a
student’s college readiness. Outside of the family, religious communities also have particular
import in social capital. Especially for students at schools within religious communities, the
networks between parents can be important assets. Stanton-Salazar (1997) has focused on school
agents as important in social capital attainment. For example, cultural differences between
predominantly White faculty and minoritized students can make border crossing (both physical
and sociological) difficult. Additionally, a middle-class focus in schools can alienate minoritized
students who may not come from middle-class backgrounds.
The impact of social and cultural capital in educational settings. While some argue
that cultural capital has an effect on high school and college grades and impacts educational
inequities and success, others have critiqued the application of capital in education. Parents pass
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 47
along cultural advantages to their children (DiMaggio, 1982). These advantages build capital
that, in turn, directly affect high school grades. After high school, social and cultural capital
continue to play a significant role in college performance, serving as a positive predictor of
undergraduate GPA for Black and Latino men (Strayhorn, 2010). Specifically, socioeconomic
status, a potential form of social capital, had the most significant impact on college achievement
for Black men. Parental jobs, another form of social capital, also affects student likelihood to
intend to attend college, where those with fathers in managerial and professional jobs more likely
to intend to attend (Davies et al., 2014). Some, though, disagree with what impact capital plays
in education. For example, Yosso (2005) argued for a racialized understanding of capital using a
critical race lens and argued against using White, middle-class communities as the norm by
which other cultures and communities should be judged. She argued that communities of culture
are wealthy in their ability to contribute to cultural capital. Another argument is that capital,
specifically cultural capital, is so ill-defined and poorly operationalized that it is a poor indicator
of student success in schools (Kingston, 2001). These arguments, though, may be criticized for
their lack of a racialized perspective.
Institutional agents in schools can promote or inhibit growth of social capital to affect
college knowledge, which is important to college readiness (Almeida, 2015a). This is usually
disseminated by socialization agents, such as parents, as a form of social and cultural capital.
First-generation students are disadvantaged compared to their non-first-generation peers in
acquiring college knowledge, then. Institutional agents, such as teachers and counselors, can act
as providers of social capital, but issues of trust, especially when minoritized students work with
privileged adults, complicate this (Stanton-Salazar, 1997). Teachers and counselors must, then,
help students navigate multiple worlds. Specifically, the dominant culture in schools may differ
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 48
from students’ home culture (Milner, 2012; Strayhorn, 2010), so teachers must help students use
their own cultural funds of knowledge to navigate these differing cultures (Moll et al., 1992).
The student achievement impact of capital. Social and cultural capital have positive
impacts on student achievement. In an empirical study, Georg (2004) found that cultural capital
was reproductive for upper classes (though, significantly only for women) and helped create
upward mobility for students from lower classes. When looking at immigrant students, Kao and
Rutherford (2007) found that first-generation and second-generation immigrant students had
lower social capital than their peers. While this typically diminished by the third generation, it
persisted for Latinx students. Moreover, parent-school involvement was positively linked to
social outcomes, but, because first- and second-generation immigrants possessed lower social
capital, it was less likely their children could gain advantage from these connections. Peer social
capital is also an important construct that can help student achievement; however Latinx students
typically have lower levels of peer social capital (Ream, 2005). One significant reason for this is
that these students tend to be more mobile. Social and cultural capital measures also positively
impact student persistence from the first-to-second years of college in both community colleges
and 4-year institutions (Wells, 2008).
Conceptual Framework: Community Cultural Wealth
While the traditional concepts of cultural capital posit that the White, middle-class
individuals are the norm and that institutions reflect these norms, requiring Communities of
Color to adapt to them, concepts of community cultural wealth counter these concepts by arguing
that Communities of Color have cultural wealth and capital that institutions and systems should
privilege (Yosso, 2005). The concept of community cultural wealth grew out of critical race
theory. Critical race theory, an off-shoot of critical legal studies, has five tenets in its application
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 49
to education: the centrality of racism and its interaction with other forms of subordination, it
challenges dominant ideologies, it is committed to social justice, it privileges experiential
knowledge, and it has a transdisciplinary perspective (Solórzano, 1997).
Community cultural wealth engages with the five aforementioned tenets in several ways.
First, it challenges the dominant deficit mindsets related to Communities of Color, instead
arguing that deficit mindsets are born from racism and racialized structures and privileging the
capital Communities of Color possess (Yosso, 2005). It also opposes the banking model of
education that Paulo Freire (1973) opposed, in which students of color are filled “with forms of
cultural knowledge deemed valuable by dominant society” (Yosso, 2005, p. 75).
Culture is the “behaviors and values that are learned, share, and exhibited by a group of
people” (Yosso, 2005, p. 75). Therefore, it is not specifically defined merely around race or
ethnicity. However, there are racial and ethnic cultures. Community cultural wealth advances
that the culture of students of color can empower them. Community wealth pushes back against
Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital that privileges White, middle-class culture by expanding
the concepts of wealth to include the various “knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts possessed
and utilized by Communities of Color to survive” (Yosso, 2005, p. 77).

COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 50

Figure 1. Conceptual Framework: Community Cultural Wealth
Six forms of capital help contribute to community cultural wealth: aspirational,
navigational, social, linguistic, familial, and resistant capital. Aspirational capital emerges from
the hopes and dreams one has for the future, even when facing barriers to these hopes and
dreams. In a study of third-grade students in a bilingual education class, DeNicolo et al. (2015)
found that the third-graders were able to identify several forms of cultural wealth they possessed
through engaging in writing narratives (testimonios). Examples of aspirational wealth from their
study included goals like of achieving bilingualism and becoming a U.S. citizen. The students
also understood that being proficient in English was important to achieving their goals because
structures in the United States privilege English. In a study of a college preparatory program in
the Los Angeles area, Jayakumar, Vue, and Allen (2013) found that even resource-rich high
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 51
schools often fail to leverage community cultural wealth, though, and rarely developed
aspirational and social capital.
Linguistic capital is the capital attained through communication experiences in multiple
languages or styles, advancing the idea that students of color have multiple language and
communication skills, including storytelling skills that may help them with several school-
specific tasks. In DeNicolo and colleagues’ (2015) study of third graders, the students’ linguistic
capital focused largely on their ability to translate for their families, which helped their families
navigate services and structures that were English-specific.
Familial capital is the cultural knowledges of familia (kin) nurtured by extended families
that help maintain one’s connection to one’s community and its resources. Social capital is
formed through networks that can provide support to help individuals navigate structures and
systems. Moreover, students of color often can give back to their social networks through mutual
aid. In their study of 30 undergraduate Latino students, Arellano and Padilla (1996) found that
participants whose parents had not completed college were largely encouraged in their success
and pursuit of education by their parents, dispelling the rumor that Latinx parents are
uninterested in their children’s education. Moreover, they found that a social connection and
affiliation with their Latino identity was a strong source of support for the participants in college.
Navigational capital refers to how one navigates social systems, specifically ones not
created for Communities of Color. Specifically related to this are ideas of resilience, or the inner
resources and strategies that help one thrive through adversity. Resistance capital is the set of
skills nurtured through oppositional behavior to challenge inequity. DeNicolo et al. (2015)
identified in third graders that even being proud of their ethnic identity in the face of negative
stereotypes was one form of oppositional behavior students use.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 52
Minoritized students, specifically Latinx students, often face a school culture that does
not privilege their community cultural wealth. In spite of this, however, Latinx students have
found ways to leverage this wealth to succeed in academic settings. In a study of high achieving
Latina students, Locke, Tabron, and Venzant Chambers (2017) found that, though participants
tended to acknowledge that they had ample forms of capital and cultural wealth, these were not
privileged at their schools. Despite this, however, they recognized their own strengths to persist.
To do so, though, they had several racial opportunity costs, which included psychosocial,
community, and representation costs. The psychosocial costs included feeling alone and isolated
because they were segregated in their courses and extracurricular activities from other students
like themselves. The community costs included feeling disconnected from their home
communities because the norms of the school communities did not reflect those of their home
communities. Representation costs included feeling like “something other” (Locke et al., 2017,
p. 27) by their peers because of their race and achievement levels.
In Kouyoumdjian, Guzmán, Garcia, & Talavera-Bustillos’ (2017) study of first- and
second-generation college students who identified as Latino, the researchers identified several
sources of challenge and support for these students. Sources of support were their families,
including parents; institutional support, like teachers or access to financial aid; financial stability;
self-determination; romantic partnerships; academic skills, like completing homework; and
tangible support, like having books. Importantly, their study also found that there were no
significant differences with sources of support between the first- and second-generation college
students.
In their study of five Latina high schoolers in public school, Taylor and Fernandez-
Bergersen (2015) found that counselors and educators often pigeon-holed the students into
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 53
stereotypical roles (e.g., in vocational tracks and as young mothers) with peers who often did not
accept them in honors classes. Racism was endemic and pervasive in their experiences, both
overtly (e.g., through stereotyping students) and subtly (e.g., through colorblind ideologies).
Despite this, the participants in the study felt they had to maintain the status quo (“play[ing]
nice” as one participant said [p. 13]). However, although they maintained the status quo in some
ways, they challenged it in other ways, such as by participating in honors courses, challenging
the stereotype held by some educators, counselors, and peers that Mexican American women
were not intelligent. In all of the aforementioned examples, students faced specific oppositions,
largely racialized, to their success but leveraged various forms of capital and cultural wealth to
promote their success.
Summary
Over the last 70 years (Almeida, 2015b), there has been a tension between high schools
and colleges in conceptualizing college readiness (Kirst & Bracco, 2004). Also, while access to
college has expanded for minoritized students (Rodríguez, 2015), their success has grown as an
issue (Almeida, 2015b). The opportunity gap (Milner, 2010) and educational debt (Ladson-
Billings, 2006) frameworks, combined with understandings of student capital and student
agency, offer a critical race perspective on college readiness and success.
College readiness is understood from cognitive and non-cognitive perspectives (Conley,
2007; Conley & French, 2014; Duncheon, 2015), however little research has looked qualitatively
as students’ perspectives. Also, while capital has been used to understand issues of college
readiness (Almeida, 2015a), there has not been significant research relating Milner’s (2010)
opportunity gap framework to college readiness gaps. Community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005)
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 54
also presents an important opportunity to consider and analyze Latinx student experiences as
they relate to their college readiness.
The next chapter highlights the study’s methodology. After discussing sample and
population, the chapter illuminates the study’s instrumentation. It then focuses on the methods
used for data collection and analysis, laying out the procedures for how the study was conducted.

COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 55
CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY
3

Because underserved and underprivileged students are often silenced or ignored when it
comes to college readiness, this study sought to illuminate their voices on this topic. This work
serves to add these students’ voices to the literature. Furthermore, this study aimed to help
inform minoritized students on various perspectives of how they may become college-ready and
prepared to attend a highly selective institution. It also aimed to inform K-12 and higher
education practices of college readiness. The following research questions guided the study:
1. In what ways do first-generation Black and Latinx college students at a highly selective
institution define and articulate their own understanding of college readiness as it relates
to their current college experience?
2. What are the perspectives of first-generation Black and Latinx college students at a
highly selective institution of higher education on how college readiness has influenced
their behaviors, actions, and engagement in college?
By interviewing current Latinx undergraduate students at a large, highly selective private
research institution in the American Southwest, this study works to illuminate and understand
what methods and practices they used to overcome institutional barriers to success. By
interviewing current first-generation minoritized students, the study highlights tools current
practitioners might use to prepare students for success.
This study employed a qualitative methodology because qualitative methods provide
“rich, thick description” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 256). The researcher used a purposeful

3
Chapters One, Two, and Three were co-authored by Joshua Watson (degree candidate for the EdD in Educational
Leadership at the University of Southern California; watsonjd@usc.edu), however some revisions were made for the
final dissertation solely by the author of this dissertation. Chapter Three, however, was changed to match the actual
methods used by the sole author of this dissertation, Patrick Patterson, and differs more greatly than the other two
co-authored chapters.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 56
selection of students who identify as minoritized, specifically Latinx, attend a highly selective
institution of higher education, and have overcome institutional obstacles to achieve success. A
critical race theory lens acted as a conceptual framework to focus on counter-storytelling,
unpacking these students’ experiences through their own perspectives and words (Solórzano &
Yosso, 2001). This dissertation sought to inform K-12 teachers, counselors, and administrators
on practices that can enhance college readiness for Black and Latinx students and inform higher
education practitioners on the experiences these students bring with them into the classroom.
Methods
Counter-storytelling is a key component of critical race theory, whereby oppressed voices
are brought to the forefront (Delgado, 1989; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Solórzano & Yosso, 2001;
Stefancic, 1988). Qualitative methods are a critical way to highlight these voices. Maxwell
(2013) identified both intellectual and practical reasons to use qualitative methods. The
intellectual reasons include understanding meaning participants ascribe to experiences,
understanding contexts, understanding processes, and identifying unanticipated events. These
match well with the goals of critical race perspectives of research and connect directly to the
research questions, specifically of understanding individuals’ college readiness experiences and
their perspectives on how these influence their behaviors in college. The practical reasons
include generating results that are credible to participants and improving practices. This connects
directly to the study’s goal of informing practice.
Sample and Site Selection
Site. Researchers need to explain and describe why they chose their site (Maxwell, 2013).
This study’s research questions concern highly selective institutions of higher education. Many
of the students who attend these highly selective private and public colleges are students who
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 57
come from upper-middle and high-income families (Dezhbakhsh & Karikari, 2010).
Furthermore, students who graduate from these colleges play disproportionate roles in society,
such as taking on roles as politicians and business leaders, and receive unparalleled benefits
(Dezhbakhsh & Karikari, 2010), including higher lifetime incomes (Dale & Krueger, 2002).
Unfortunately, for many students of color, as family income decreases, the likelihood of
attending attends a highly selective private college decreases (Dezhbakhsh & Karikari, 2010).
Research and literature pertaining to college readiness at highly selective institutions is scarce,
especially involving first-generation Black and Latinx students. To add to this literature, the site
for this study was a large private highly selective institution United States southwest where
issues of college readiness and gaps in opportunity are greater for Black and Latinx students.
Participants. Entry into the research setting and with research participants was attained
through gatekeepers (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Gatekeepers acted as important ports of entry to
the participants and included administrators and staff at the research site who work with
programs that specifically serve first-generation college students. Specific offices were chosen
because they serve the populations explicitly listed in the research questions. Two cultural
offices sent out a recruitment flyer, as did one scholarship program office, a major program
office, and a school-based diversity office. No specific numbers were attained about how many
students received the flyer, but the constituent groups of these offices number in excess of 1,000
students. Employees who work with these programs also served to identify student participants
and provide a background to the resources provided at the site.
After working with these gatekeepers to establish entry, the researcher sent emails to
potential participants to elicit interest. Purposeful sampling allowed the researcher to discover,
understand, and gain insight from participants and the sample was selected to include individuals
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 58
from whom the most could be learned (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Participants were selected
based on willingness to participate as long as they fit the research criteria: identifying Latinx,
being a first-generation college student, and attending the institution that is host to the research.
To indicate their interest, participants filled out an online meeting request. Once students filled
out the online survey indicating interest and giving contact information and affirming they meet
the selection criteria, the researcher followed-up to confirm the interview. Potential participants
could give their preferred first form of contact, either a phone number or e-mail address. After
interviews, participants were given the option of passing along information for other potential
interviewees, allowing for snowball sampling, whereby participants are recruited from referrals
by other participants (Rubin & Rubin, 2012). All students who filled out the online survey were
eventually interviewed. Five participants participated and were interviewed based upon the
criteria mentioned.
Data Collection
This research utilized interviews with participants and campus-based administrators and
staff. The students were purposefully selected because they identified as Black or Latinx,
attended the host institution, and had overcome institutional obstacles to achieve success.
Though the research questions, literature review, and methodology were co-constructed with
another researcher, the primary author of this study conducted interviews on his own.
Interviews provide a gateway to the observations of others (Weiss, 1994) and illuminate
their feelings, thoughts, and intentions (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). By bringing others into the
participants’ stories, the author hopes to bring to the fore the participants’ counterstories, an
important aspect of critical race theory (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001). Interviews were conducted
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 59
with students who fit the research criteria and staff who work with minoritized populations. Only
the former interviews were coded for themes.
Potential participants filled out an online form and indicated the best time and location
for an in-person meeting. They also provided their preferred contact information to ensure
comfort for a first formal contact from the researcher. Participants received an information and
fact sheet for non-medical research. Though participants did not need to sign informed consent
forms, this acted as a way to gain informed consent from them (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) and is
the preferred method of gaining informed consent in studies of this type from the host institution.
Interviews lasted between 30 and 60 minutes based upon participant responses; this is usually a
preferred time frame for qualitative interviews (Weiss, 1994). Interviews were audio recorded
with permission from the participants and supplemental notes were taken by the researcher
during the interviews. Additionally, the interviews were informal, using both a standard
interview guide and allowing for open-ended responses (Patton, 2002). The standard guide
allowed the interviewer to understand what makes the participants’ experiences similar and
different, while allowing for open-ended responses empowers participants to tell their own
stories. Because this study aims to inform practice, this is critical. Students were interviewed
until no further participants were identified and repetitive themes started to indicate research
saturation (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
While participant perspectives are key to counter-storytelling (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001),
data triangulation is a key to ensuring validity in research (Maxwell, 2013). As a result, the
researcher conducted interviews with administrators and staff who work with programs serving
first-generation Latinx students at the host site to approach the data from multiple perspectives.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 60
Data Analysis
Interviews were transcribed and coded using a constant-comparative approach (Corbin &
Strauss, 2008; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). In this approach, each data incident was compared
against other incidents to develop codes. This method aligns well with a critical race perspective
because it illuminates the experiences of the participants themselves, bringing to light their
stories rather than focusing merely on pre-supposed or a priori outcomes. The constant-
comparative method involves three steps of coding (Lichtman, 2014). In the open coding
process, raw data was categorized and named. In the axial coding phase, codes were related to
each other for theme identification. In the selective coding phase, choices were made about the
most important codes. For example, when a participant discussed seeking help, this may be
coded based on the participant’s original intent (e.g., as “help-seeking” or “questioning”). These
were then related to each other, collapsed into the category of “help-seeking.” Through the
analysis process, this coded was identified as important to helping answer the research questions.
After transcribing the interviews, the researcher identified first-cycle codes by assigning
terms or keywords to the data (Miles et al., 2014). The researcher engaged several types of
codes: a priori codes, such as college knowledge, come from the previous research (Creswell,
2014); in vivo codes come from the participants own words (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). Codes like
“student organizations” and “help-seeking” emerged from the text or from participants own
words.
Second-level coding, known as axial coding or pattern coding, begins the process of
categorizing the first-level open codes (Miles et al., 2014). At this level, themes, categories, and
constructs emerge. The researcher identified patterns through several processes, including
identifying relationships among codes, looking at relationships to theoretical constructs, and
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 61
identifying explanations for phenomena. For example, codes like “Minority College Preparation
Programs” and “Student Organizations” were collapsed into a code of “Involvement.” The
researcher also utilized Harding’s (2013) recommendation to identify discrepancies and
differences as an important aspect of second-level coding.
In the third level of coding, the researcher identified the most important codes through
the process of selective coding (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). In this phase, some codes were
collapsed into broader themes or some codes emerged as most important to answering the
research questions. Using this constant-comparative method was necessary because the research
questions involve examining students’ perspectives and the constant-comparative method allows
researchers to do this in a way that helps build broader theoretical perspectives and
understandings that help to inform practice.
Researcher Biases & Positionality
The researcher served as a key and primary instrument in this study (Merriam & Tisdell,
2016). Both potential advantages and disadvantages emerged from this approach. The researcher,
therefore, recognized and understood his own positionality and biases as they relate to this
research so that he could best use his experience and identity as a tool and instrument in the
research. Foremost, the researcher identifies as a White cis-gender man (e.g., a man who was
born a man and identifies as a man). Rhodes (1994) discussed several potential pitfalls of White
interviewers working with Black participants: potential mistrust of White people could inhibit
effective communication, White interviewers may bring prejudicial analyses, and power
differentials will be present. However, Rhodes also posited that, if Black researchers are the only
ones expected to produce research on Black participants, it would be “a form of academic
marginalisation” (p. 554). This line of thought could be extended to White interviewers working
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 62
with other non-White groups in research, such as the participants in this study. As a result, the
researcher worked to be aware of and reflect frequently with his chair and committee on his role
as a White man and of the power differential inherently present in work with minoritized
populations. At the same time, though, as a first-generation college student, there are ways in
which the researcher felt he could connect with the research on a personal level that acted as a
potential advantage to the research. Maxwell (2013) pointed out that research interest can be
important in the overall goals of a study. The researcher’s personal interest in the research, then,
may have served as an asset. The researcher felt like his background, though different from the
participants’, served as an asset. As a first-generation college student, he was able to relate to the
students in some ways. And while his racial background was different, the participants seemed
open to discussing issues of race in their interview, which seems to have helped mitigate some of
the potential pitfalls mentioned before, such as inhibiting effective communication.

COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 63
CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS
This study addressed the important problem of the disproportionate number of
minoritized students who are not college-ready at elite institutions in the United States. While
college readiness is traditionally defined as beginning college without requiring remediation and
includes cognitive, non-cognitive, and campus-integration factors (Duncheon, 2015), participants
did not focus on cognitive factors or remediation, but, instead, defined college readiness around
college knowledge, or understanding the processes and culture of college. Engaging with five
participants from a highly selective institution in the American Southwest, this study sought to
understand how, despite being college-ready by traditional notions, participants may feel that
they arrived not fully college-ready. This chapter investigates how these feelings and thoughts
impacted the students’ college experiences. The students’ experiences and stories from their own
perspectives are important counter-stories, that is, stories from a subjugated group that challenge
a common White narrative (Delgado, 2014b). These stories attempt to counter revisionist
histories that often work to ignore minorities’ experiences (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001).
Narrative is not enough, however. Language alone cannot “enlarge our sympathies” (Delgado &
Stefancic, 2014b, p. 324). These narratives, then, are paired with research and followed in the
proceeding chapter with concrete steps to make change for minoritized students.
Site
This study included students from one elite institution of higher education. The
University of the Southwest (USW, as pseudonym) is a large, private university in the United
States’ southwest, one of the oldest universities in its region. Ranked in the top 25 of United
States universities by US News & World Report, one important reason for the high ranking is that
its endowment measures in the billions. USW admits less than 20% of its applicants, making it a
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 64
highly selective institution. Moreover, the median SAT scores of incoming admits fall within the
90th and 99th percentiles. Additionally, nearly nine out of every ten students were in the top
tenth of their high school graduating class for incoming first-year first-time college students.
At the time of the study, the institution was composed of 22 colleges or professional
schools according to the institution’s website. More than a third of incoming undergraduate
students, though, were concentrated in the arts and science division, which offers a variety of
undergraduate programs and includes advising in pre-professional programs. Nearly one-quarter
of incoming undergraduate students were interested in pursuing professional degrees after
college. Almost 20% of incoming students enrolled in the business school, with similar numbers
enrolled in one of the institution’s art-based schools (17% between the combined art schools).
The institution had several resources to support degree completion for actively enrolled
students. In addition to within-school resources, the institution had university-wide academic
counseling, writing and tutoring services, and learning center services. Student health and
counseling services were also important aspects of the institution’s objective to serve students.
Given the student population characteristics and the support resources offered, the 6-year
graduation rate was more than 90% with the first-year retention rate being even greater.
USW was a graduate-heavy institution. With over 40,000 students, less than half of those
were undergraduates. It also presented itself as a global institution with nearly a quarter of all
students being international, though this number was only 14% of undergraduates. Whereas
nearly 40% of undergraduate students identified as White, almost 14% (about 2,500 students)
identified as Hispanic (a term used by the institution) and around 4% (about 800 students)
identified as Black. The underrepresentation of Black students could be a result of differential
racialization (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). That is, racial groups are racialized in their own
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 65
distinctive ways based on the needs of the majority group and are thus also afforded privileges or
oppressed in distinct ways. This may result in a disproportionately low number of Black students
versus some other racial groups.
The undergraduate population was nearly evenly split among males and females. The
faculty, however, were less representative of the student population, with nearly two-thirds
identifying as White and only 6% and 3% respectively identifying as Hispanic and Black.
Around 19% of students were first-generation college students and about 22% of students were
also Pell Grant recipients, which are student grants provided by the federal government to
support students with financial need (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). For reporting
purposes, the institution considered Pell Grant recipients to be low-income.
Hispanic students were overrepresented among the first-generation population on
campus, comprising nearly a third of undergraduate first-generation students. Six percent of the
first-generation undergraduate students identified as Black. Though USW provided little public
information about its first-generation population at the time of the study outside of its racial
makeup, it did have specific programming and support for first-generation college students. The
institution had a first-generation student union that provided peer mentorship and programming.
In addition, the institution hosted an annual summit for these students to encourage collaboration
and networking as well as provide information and resources. Additionally, several faculty and
staff sat on various committees dedicated to serving first-generation students. USW also
developed an annual resource guide for these students, provided online and available to all
students. Related to support for diverse students, the university had cultural centers for students
who identify as Latinx, Black, and Asian, all of which fell within the student affairs division.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 66
There were also several dozen student organizations dedicated to supporting these students as
well as student assemblies for these groups.
As a private institution, tuition costs were high at the time of the study, usually more than
$50,000 per year for undergraduate students. However, to support students in need, the
university awarded more than $300 million in grants and scholarships per year. More than 100
incoming students received full-tuition scholarships and almost 400 received half-tuition
scholarships. The institution also assisted students with need-based aid through scholarships,
grants, work-study, and loan eligibility.
Table 1
Participant Demographic Chart
Annabeth Emely Jasmine Julieta Laila
Self-identified
Race
Latinx
Hispanic,
“half
Salvadorian
and half
Mexican”
Latina and
Indigenous
Mexican
American
and Latina
Bi-racial,
Middle
Eastern and
Latina
Gender Female Female Female Female Female
Year in
School
Third-Year
Student
Second-Year
Student
Fourth-Year
Student
Second-Year
Student
Fifth-Year
Student
Major
Mathematics
(interested in
Teaching)
Sociology
Narrative
Studies
Neuroscience
NGOs and
Social
Change
First-
Generation
College
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Pell Recipient Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Transfer No No No No
Yes (from a
4-year
institution)
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 67
Participants
All five participants were current undergraduates at the institution and identified as
women. Importantly, none of the participants in the study were men. As a result, a gendered
aspect to the findings may exist. However, given the conceptual framework, research questions,
and interview protocol, this aspect was not fully fleshed out. For their racial identity, they used
terms such Latinx, Hispanic, or Latina to identify themselves. The ranged from a student
entering her second year to a student in her fifth year with majors across several fields. To be
eligible for the study, all participants had to be first-generation college students and be Pell Grant
recipients.
Annabeth was a junior. She grew up about 10 miles away from the university in an urban
neighborhood and came from an “overprotective” household, one that she defined as traditional
for Latinx students. She majored in mathematics with an interest in teaching and was in one of
the education school’s minors. She visited USW several times in high school as part of a math
and science club she participated in, deciding to enroll because it was “prestigious” and a “work
hard, play hard” school. Additionally, a staff member on campus with whom she connected was
also from her hometown, giving her an extra connection to the institution.
Emely was a sophomore sociology major identifying as “half Salvadorian and half
Mexican.” She said, though, that she usually put “Hispanic” on forms and applications. She was
from a low-income household in a low-income area and felt like she did not have many resources
growing up. Unlike the other participants, she was not from the state and chose USW because it
was in the southwest and because she received a “really good financial aid” package. A high
school program she participated in that provides scholarships to various schools also “nudged”
her toward attending the institution. She aspired to work in the field of higher education and
minored in education to help attain that goal.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 68
Jasmine was a fourth-year senior majoring in narrative studies. Growing up near USW’s
urban campus, she said her father was a fan of the football team and had a chance to explore
campus often. Her parents were particularly interested in her attending college, though they did
not themselves, and brought her to one of the campus libraries several times as a child. Like
other participants, she was interested in pursuing graduate studies, particularly in education. She
identified as Latina and Indigenous. Despite growing up near USW, she originally had an interest
in attending an out-of-state school. She chose to attend USW, though, to maintain her connection
to the community. There, too, were several co-curricular activities the institution offered, such as
service-learning programs, that attracted her to it.
Julieta was in the summer between her first- and second-years of college and identified as
Mexican American and Latina. She and her brother grew up in an urban single-parent household
in a county adjacent to USW and her mother worked long hours. She was a neuroscience major
but had debated between pre-law and pre-medicine tracks. Eventually, she decided on
neuroscience to pursue pre-med, but keeping open possibilities for law school. Her brother, one
year older than she was, came to USW after high school and encouraged her to attend. She said
that, on her first visit to the campus the institutional “spirit was thrust on” her and it inspired her
to enroll. Being in band also helped her make her decision because she was able to make friends
easily that way.
Laila was a fifth-year senior and the only participant who was a transfer student. Her
parents were divorced, and her mother raised her and her siblings as a single parent. Because of
this, Laila’s mom worked long hours. Laila was also the only participant to identify specifically
as bi-racial, identifying as Middle Eastern and Latina. She was majoring in nongovernmental
organizations and social change because she had a passion for working with refugees and
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 69
immigrants and wanted to work internationally with nongovernmental organizations. She first
attended a state school but felt it was “too easy” for her and felt like attending USW was a “risk”
she wanted to take.
Research Question 1
The first research question asked, “In what ways do first-generation Latinx college
students at a highly selective institution define and articulate their own understanding of college
readiness as it relates to their current college experience?” Inherent in answering this question,
this chapter first examines how the participants defined college readiness and, then, how they
related it to their current college experiences. Last, the chapter relays the participants’ thoughts
on their own college readiness.
Typically, the participants focused their definitions of college readiness around college
knowledge, spending less time on the cognitive factors necessary to be ready for college
curriculum such as content knowledge. And, while the women could articulate several skills they
developed in high school to succeed in college, and skills they were continuing to develop, they
tended to have primarily negative thoughts about their own college readiness.
College Readiness Defined as College Knowledge
Whereas traditional notions of college readiness focus on remediation (Conley, 2007,
2010; Duncheon, 2015), the women in this study focused more heavily on college knowledge as
central to defining college readiness. College knowledge is “understanding the procedural
requirements and cultural expectations of college” (Duncheon, 2015, p. 9). While some of the
participants mentioned cognitive academic factors, like content knowledge and cognitive skills
(Duncheon, 2015), their focus was largely on knowing how to navigate college in general and
not focused solely on the academic coursework.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 70
Julieta believed that the right knowledge early was important. She remarked, “I think it’s
having the right information given to you early on.” Expanding on this, she said, it was vital to
know “what the goal is, what the end goal would be” in attending college. Julieta’s response is
largely informed by her background in high school. Although Julieta described her family’s
socioeconomic status as low, she attended high school in a different neighborhood that was more
affluent. “The high school I went to was primarily White in a very rich community,” she said.
Continuing, she explained, “and so most of these students aren’t first-generation, so they kind of
assume that all the information, the students already knew.” She felt she had to reach out a lot
and ask a lot of questions like “‘Oh, what’s an AP class,’ or, ‘Oh, which one [class] should I
take,’ and stuff like that.” She emphasized, then, the procedural aspect of understanding college
readiness; that is, knowing what classes to take to be ready for college, rather than merely the
content knowledge necessary. Julieta had access to AP coursework and college counseling and
identified these as important, but she also had to take self-initiative just to understand what she
did and did not know. This could potentially stem from colorblind ideologies (Milner, 2012), the
idea that providing equal resources to all students, regardless of race, is most appropriate. As a
result, the poor guidance she received was itself an opportunity gap experienced.
While Emely did mention some specific skills that define college readiness, such as “time
management, like having that skill is really important for being college-ready, [and] good study
skills,” she also said college readiness was “knowing the logistics as far as what classes you need
to take for your major and stuff like that.” In talking about skills important to college readiness,
she mentioned financial aid. “I didn’t know how to use the FAFSA, which is a financial aid
website, right? I was freaking out, so I just had to call instead.” Emely’s identification of
financial aid and college “logistics” were important aspects of the college application and
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 71
college-going process for her. Milner’s (2012) context neutral mindsets, one of the opportunity
gap components, may be at play here. That is, Emely came from a higher-poverty school and
was low-income. Her teachers and counselors, however, did not provide college counseling that
was sensitive to the unique needs of a high-poverty population.
Laila’s definition focused more on academics than the other participants, centering more
on knowing about the academic expectations of college. In defining college readiness, she said,
“I think what it means to be college-ready is understanding the difficulty of just the type of
academic environment I’m going into.” Laila relayed an impactful story about her first day of
college as it relates to understanding how to navigate college:
I think the skills that would have definitely helped, just like navigating college because I
just remember first day my mom dropped me off at college, like all the parents were there
giving their kids like, “Okay, this is what you’re gonna do on your first day of school.
You have to get textbooks.” Or, “We’ll go with you to buy your textbooks at the
bookstore.” Or, “Make sure to talk to your professor and introduce yourself.” Like, my
mom literally just dropped me off, helped me move my stuff in, and left. And that was
terrifying because I was six hours away [and] didn’t know what I was doing.
For her, one of the most impactful experiences was not a classroom experience or an issue of
content knowledge, but understanding the procedural expectations of college.
Like Julieta, Laila attended a middle-to-upper-class high school but was personally from
a working-class background. At a school that was predominantly White and middle-to-upper-
class, several forms of discrimination may have been at play for her, such as the intersection of
racism and classism. She felt like she “had enough resources for me to ask if I wanted it, but not
knowing the resources was the hard part.” That is, Laila felt like she had resources available to
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 72
her but did not know all her resource options or how to utilize them. While her agency had not
necessarily been taken from her, she did not know the proper way to use her agency. Laila also
said that being college-ready involved a social aspect, which she described as “just networking
and talking to professors and that kind of thing.” Laila’s concept of college readiness, then,
focused largely on campus-integration factors, such as college knowledge and her relationship to
others.
Jasmine’s perception of college readiness was a bit different than Emely’s and Laila’s
given her focus more on knowing college options rather than merely knowing logistics of
college. “It [college readiness] definitely means being exposed to different colleges that are
outside of your immediate area.” For her, the procedural aspect of knowing what colleges were
available was important. For example, she shared that her college counselors seemed very
knowledgeable about state schools, but they did not have much information on private colleges.
She mentioned that she had been “not really sure how that process works [of applying to private
colleges]. You have to kind of like navigate that on your own.” In Jasmine’s home statethe
public education system is setup to provide wide access to education through several levels of
higher education (Rodríguez, 2015). While teachers and counselors may believe that having
knowledge of the more open-access system of public higher education benefits students, it cuts
off a sector of higher education that already is dominated by White students.
Jasmine also talked about the importance of knowing about college majors, “so that kind
of fits into college readiness, too. Knowing what you’re going to major in, what you want to do
while you’re in college.” About her own experience selecting a major, she remarked, “[I] felt like
I wasn’t really exposed to a lot of different avenues to kind of like find myself in the
curriculum.” Jasmine found herself wanting her high school’s college counselors to provide
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 73
more information about all her options and looked for ways to match her college options to her
own needs.
Annabeth thought that certain non-cognitive habits, like study skills, were important
“because college classes are a lot more course heavy,” yet she also mentioned issues of college
knowledge. “In terms of financial aid, filling out the applications is also important to be ready for
college,” she mentioned. She similarly discussed taking on internships and getting involved in
school as critical. Annabeth’s definition was broad, placing an emphasis on college knowledge
as important to college readiness.
College knowledge is an umbrella term used by various researchers in understanding
college readiness (Duncheon, 2015; Roderick et al., 2009), though each participant identified
various types of college knowledge that were important. Emely and Annabeth emphasized
financial aid knowledge, whereas Laila focused more on academic expectation knowledge and
social relationship knowledge. Jasmine, however, focused more on college option knowledge.
So, each provided her own perspective, yet they all shared a common idea of college knowledge
as key to college readiness.
Not Feeling College-Ready
No participant felt she was fully college-ready when starting college. Based upon the
traditional notion of college readiness, that one enrolls in college without remediation (Conley,
2007; Duncheon, 2015), the women would be considered “college ready” because none were
required to enroll in remediation. However, the participants themselves did not necessarily feel
college-ready based upon their own definition of college readiness related to college knowledge.
So, while they were academically prepared, they said they did not feel otherwise prepared.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 74
Being academically prepared. The participants in this study were, by traditional
definitions, academically prepared for college because they did not require remediation. As a
result, they were considered “college ready” per Conley’s (2007; 2010) definition. One potential
reason is that several of the participants took AP coursework in high school. AP courses offer
advanced curricula which allow students to take a test administered through the College Board
(2018) which can be used to get college credit, saving time and money in college. AP
coursework also is a positive predictor of college attendance (Chajewski, Mattern, & Shaw,
2011) and earning a 3 (out of 5) or above on the AP English language or literature exams
predicts higher college GPAs (Scott, Tolson, & Lee, 2010). Three of the participants specifically
mentioned AP coursework as important to their ability to get into college and succeed once
enrolled.
Annabeth, for example, singled out her AP US History course as being important. In
addition to the content itself, the study skills her teacher imparted were important to her ability to
succeed. She said, “Our teacher was really great because he would give us this method of first
you read the book, then you take notes, then you answer questions.” Julieta did not know about
AP classes until high school, but she said she took every single one her school offered because
she felt they would prepare her for college. Specifically, she mentioned that she learned skills
such as building study guides that she was able to use in her college coursework. Additionally,
Laila talked about how she enrolled in an AP course even though she did not have the GPA to
stay in. “One of my teachers said I wasn’t allowed to register unless I had a certain GPA, but he
just did it anyways,” she commented, meaning her teacher let her enroll in the course regardless
of her GPA. However, once she enrolled, she was able to succeed, helping get her overall GPA
up and meet a goal she and her college counselor set for college admissions. She attributed this
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 75
to some of her success in getting into USW. Taking AP tests is an advantage even for students
who do not pass (Warne et al., 2015). These students, on average, receive higher ACT scores
than their peer who do not take AP courses or who take the courses without taking the
examination. This is an important opportunity, then, afforded to these students. It provides some
disconfirming evidence of the role of opportunity gaps, as a result. However, whereas Annabeth
and Laila were given these unique opportunities, they also discussed other ways, such as through
poor college counseling in high school, that they were denied certain opportunities.
Not feeling otherwise prepared. Though the participants were academically prepared
and typically felt as such, each participant stated that they did not feel fully prepared in a
different way. Annabeth, for example, said she would rate her college readiness as “so-so.” She
mentioned, “It’s definitely been harder because I didn’t have all the knowledge about what
college is going to be like, but it still hasn’t deterred me from my goal.” Emely said that she was
“prepared that [she] wouldn’t be ready” for college, understanding that she would learn things
along the way. Similarly, Julieta said she was “as ready as [she] could be.”
Jasmine was more equivocal in her response. She said, “I definitely didn’t feel like I was
college-ready.” She expanded, saying that “all I knew was that it was going to be more difficult,”
but she wasn’t sure in way ways it would be. Like Emely, she thought she would need to learn
along the way. Jasmine had a certain sense of agency, then, knowing that she was not fully aware
of how to succeed, but also feeling that she could. Moreover, Jasmine leveraged her cultural
capital to assist her by living on a residence hall floor specifically designed to support Latinx
students. So while USW adopted the culture of the dominant White group, as per Bordieu
(1986), she was able to find support through a culturally-based group to help her navigate the
institution.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 76
Laila’s perception was different from the other participants. She felt she came “ready
academically, but not in the sense socially.” Specifically, she felt she had the right cognitive
resources necessary for her to succeed, but was less confident in other factors, such as the social
factors involved, which she included to mean college knowledge factors. She remarked,
“understanding my resources, the financial aspect of it, and just networking and talking to
professors and that kind of thing. I was not ready for the social aspect of college.” Laila put a
large emphasis on networking, understanding that interactions with college faculty are important
to student academic success in college and career success afterward. Laila understood that she
needed to establish new information channels (Coleman, 1988) to build social capital that she
lacked in high school.
Though none of the students attributed specific reasons to not feeling fully college-ready,
one major theme emerged. Several participants felt they received poor college counseling in high
school. This is not surprising because many first-generation college students tend to lack the
social capital necessary to inherently build the necessary college knowledge for college success
(Almeida, 2015b). Familial networks act as one of three major actors in dispensing college
knowledge, along with in-class actors (like teachers) and out-of-class actors (like counselors).
Being first-generation college students, the participants in this study could not necessarily rely on
family for college knowledge. As a result, their informational channels (Coleman, 1998) were
cut off in several important ways. However, some participants received information from older
siblings, such as Julieta, or served as information channels for their younger siblings, like
Jasmine. So, with poor college counseling in high school, they were severely disadvantaged
compared to their non-first-generation peers. Julieta, for example, attended a school outside of
her neighborhood where many of the students, she said, would not be first-generation college
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 77
students, “so they [college counselors] kind of assume that all the information, the students
already knew.” Jasmine relayed an especially powerful story about her experience taking the
ACT:
You could take the ACT or the SAT, so, when I did sign up for the ACT, I actually had
the option of taking it with writing or without writing, and I ended up taking it without
writing for some reason, and then I found out later on that none of the colleges would
accept it unless it was taken with writing. But, then, it was already too late to retake it
because I was already so far along in the application process. And it was like I spent this
money and went to the test, took the test, and the score’s kind of invalid.
Without proper counseling, Jasmine took a test that did not help her get into some of the colleges
she wanted because they required the writing portion of the ACT exam. Jasmine remarked that
she “was in a school that didn’t have great counselors, didn’t have a lot of resources that could
help me.” Thankfully for her, USW did not require the essay portion of the ACT. And, when
Jasmine talked about college knowledge as college readiness, she specifically said her counselors
did not provide a lot of knowledge about private universities, including that many colleges
require the writing section of the ACT.
High school college counselors in urban public schools, like the ones many of the
participants attended, have smaller budgets and larger caseloads than counterparts at suburban
schools (O’Connor, 2010). Moreover, these college counselors are less likely to have any direct
training in college counseling. Though the participants did not speak about their counselors’
training nor the budgets, because they did mention that their counselors were sometimes
overworked, there appears to be an opportunity gap at play when it comes to college counseling.
The women in this study beat several odds in attending college, including that students who
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 78
receive poor or perfunctory high school college counseling are more likely to delay college
(Johnson et al., 2010).
So, while the participants were considered college-ready according to many of the most
common definitions because they did not require remediation (Conley, 2007, 2010; Duncheon,
2015), they felt they were not prepared because they defined college readiness around college
knowledge. Despite several participants having taken AP coursework and academically rigorous
high school curricula, several felt they received poor college counseling in high school and did
not come to college-ready to navigate the cultural milieu of the institution. However,
notwithstanding this, the participants were encouraged by several factors to succeed.
Important Ways Participants Were Encouraged
Despite their challenges, all women did mention powerful motivators that helped them
succeed in getting into a highly selective university. Specifically, the women mentioned that they
pursued college to give back to their families and their home communities. Additionally, they
talked about the role aspirational goals, the desire to achieve a goal beyond what one may see is
necessarily within his or her reach, had in helping them succeed.
Giving back. A recurrent mindset among the participants was the thought of seeking a
better life for themselves and their families to give back to them and their home communities.
The participants found much support at home, countering some of the traditional narratives that
Latinx parents are unsupportive of their children pursuing higher education (Arellano & Padilla,
1996). The participants’ parents helped establish college-going norms within their households.
Establishing these types of norms is one important facet of developing social capital (Coleman,
1988). For example, though Julieta’s mother could not afford to pay for Julieta to go to college,
she encouraged her to get a good GPA in high school, so she could attend college. Julieta’s
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 79
mother engaged in instilling aspirational capital in Julieta through encouraging her to “dream of
possibilities beyond their present circumstances” (Yosso, 2005, p. 78). Similarly, Emely said,
“My mom is very supportive as far as education. She wants me to do whatever I am passionate
about, so that helps, too, to have that support.” Jasmine’s parents went a step further and actually
brought her to the USW campus several times when she was a child. This support did not end
with parents, either. For Julieta, her brother was a large source of support because he was a year
older than she and preceded her at USW. When asked what inspired her to apply there, she said,
“My brother, I think. He was the major person.” The participants were able to both leverage the
familial capital (Yosso, 2005) to persist to college and use their college experiences as a way to
connect with their family and community in a different way.
Because their families had been large supporters for them, the participants often wanted
to succeed in college to help give back to them. Several participants talked about college as a
way for them to “be something better,” as Julieta put it. Laila’s parents were refugees to the
United States, but her mother had finished one semester of nursing school in her home country.
She mentioned, “I think that was my inspiration ‘Okay, if I go to college, I can help my family
and finish that [college] for them.’” Even in difficult situations, she said, “what kept me going
was knowing that I was gonna help my family at the end of the day.” Similarly, Jasmine wanted
to help her community. On what encouraged her, she said, “I feel like I didn’t have the best
education growing up, so I kind of want to go back to my community and make sure that I’m
there to help students.” The participants felt that going to college was not only a benefit to them,
but to their families and communities. They were helping to bridge the social capital gap that
often exists for students of color and first-generation college students in college admissions
(Almeida, 2015b). Noticing that their peers did not have the proper family or school support in
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 80
acquiring college knowledge, they used their experiential knowledge to support their home
communities.
Aspirational goal-setting. Aspirational goals are those set despite potential barriers to
achieving them (Yosso, 2005). For the participants, having important goals and working toward
them was critical not only in getting to college for several of the participants, but also once they
arrived. Laila said, for example, that “it’s more of my aspirations and goals that have pushed me
to want to do better in school.” In high school, she said that she spoke with a counselor about
attending college. Her experience was more positive than some of the other participants’
experiences with counselors. When the counselor said that she was not doing well enough in her
classes, Laila and the counselor developed a specific goal-setting plan. Likewise, Annabeth
talked about how her personal goal of being a teacher has been a constant motivator for her. She
even said, “It’s definitely been harder because I didn’t have all the knowledge about what college
is going to be like, but it still hasn’t deterred me from my goal. I still want to graduate and get
that degree.” So, even without all appropriate college knowledge, or “the procedural
requirements and cultural expectations of college” (Duncheon, 2015, p. 9), Annabeth felt her
goals of graduating from college and becoming a teacher helped her succeed. Despite the
challenges presented, her aspirations helped her envision a better future. Julieta also said that
having a clear goal in mind helped her maintain motivation in getting to college and succeeding
once there. For Julieta, her goal was to seek a “better life” than she had growing up because of
the sacrifices her parents made to support her.
What the participants may not have realized is that, because elite colleges privilege
academic performance in admissions (Espenshade & Radford, 2009), it is likely that they came
with the skills necessary to succeed in their goals even if they felt they were not fully college-
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 81
ready. This aligns with the cultural capital concept that schools typically reflect the cultural
expectations of dominant groups to the exclusion of non-dominant and oppressed groups
(Lamont & Lareau, 2015). However, these aspirational goals, paired with their desire to seek a
better life for themselves and their families and communities encouraged the participants in this
study to push themselves in college, even when they felt they may not be fully college-ready.
Summary
While researchers have identified college knowledge as one construct related to college
readiness (Duncheon, 2015), the participants in this study centered their definitions around
knowledge about college processes and culture. And though many were academically prepared
for the rigor of a highly selective college, none felt they came to college as fully college-ready,
perhaps because of poor college counseling in high school. What did encourage them, however,
was setting aspirational goals and working to give back to their families and home communities.
Research Question 2
The second research question asked, “What are the perspectives of first-generation Latinx
college students at a highly selective institution of higher education on how college readiness has
influenced their behaviors, actions, and engagement in college?” The participants had three
important insights into how their past experiences shaped their college ones. The first was that
they engaged in help-seeking. The second was that they often used their college readiness
experiences as an impetus for change for their communities. The third was that these experiences
inspired them to get more involved in campus organizations. For the participants, these factors,
though not always positive, helped shape their college experiences in powerful and positive
ways.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 82
Help-Seeking
The participants identified help-seeking as important. Because they felt that systems were
not setup necessarily for them to succeed, they often had to seek help and information
themselves. Emely, for example, remarked that she did not know how to navigate financial aid.
She said, “I didn’t know how to use the FAFSA, which is a financial aid website, right? I was
freaking out, so I just had to call instead.” Jasmine similarly said that “asking a lot of questions”
was important and she often had to ask about how processes worked because she was not sure.
Similarly, Julieta thought that “not being afraid to ask for help” was an integral skill students
needed to succeed in college, while Laila felt this was almost necessary for first-generation and
minority college students. So, though the participants found that independence was necessary
and important for college, they employed help-seeking as a way for them to navigate the many
important aspects of college knowledge.
Help-seeking for the participants in this study may have been an important way to
overcome issues of agency. The participants in this study were given the information their
teachers and counselors felt was best for them. This included information on classes to take in
high school, classes to take in college, how to get financial aid, and even which colleges to which
to apply. Because teachers can often see students as immature, they often create narratives
without considering student opinions and voices (Rudduck & Fielding, 2006). Unsatisfied with
the information they were getting, students started to ask questions. These questions opened a
dialogue, ending the one-way transfer of information and creating a two-way communication
system. As Taylor and Robinson (2009) point out, dialogue is one potential way to incorporate
student voice and agency into education. They acknowledge, however, that issues of power
between students and teachers interferes with it being an effective tool. The students, then, by
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 83
becoming the question-askers and seeking help on their own start to take some of this power for
themselves.
The academic help-seeking literature is not extensive as it concerns minoritized students.
One researcher, however, found that help-seeking was largely connected to student sense of
classroom belonging, wherein belonging was positively correlated to help-seeking (Ersig-
Marcus, 2014). That said, another study on ethnically diverse female high school students found
that expectancy for success and achievement goals positively predicted help-seeking in English
and math classrooms (Zusho & Barnett, 2011). The participants in this study seemed to engage
in help-seeking out of necessity, feeling that they could not properly navigate college without
taking the initiative to search out help themselves. While specific supports existed to assist them,
such as college counselors in high school and college preparation programs, these programs were
insufficient to provide the participants the necessary college knowledge to be successful.
Setting an Example
Several of the students received peer mentorship and saw this as an important aspect of
their college success. These mentor relationships, however, were rarely institutionalized. For
example, while Laila received a mentor through her involvement in an academic preparation
program, all other participants who had peer mentors were assigned them upon request through
other organizations, like the Latino pre-med organization. A few of the participants were inspired
to serve either in formal relationships as mentors to others themselves or took on informal
relationships with others to aid them in their college-going journey, setting an example for
younger students from their communities. Julieta, who had a peer mentor through a pre-med
organization her brother helped found, relayed this powerful story about setting an example for
others:
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 84
I go to a Hispanic church, and a lot of the people there come from low-income
backgrounds. There’s about 15 youth members, and, of those 15 youth members, my
brother and I are the first ones to go to college, like ever. So, there are middle school
students and there are a couple high school students behind us, and, every time I go back,
they’re always like, “How’d you do it? How’d you get in? What can I do?” You know?
So, it’s like, oh man, these kids are looking up to what we’re doing, and I want to set a
good example for them, and I also want to help them.
Julieta felt she received poor college counseling in high school because her counselors geared
their services toward students who were not first-generation college students. This concept of
sameness, or providing equal opportunities to students, specifically afforded her fewer
opportunities than her White and Asian counterparts (Ladson-Billings, 1998). Because she so
appreciated the experience she had at USW, she wanted to help the other kids in her church who
may have received similarly inadequate counseling. She said, “I want those same experiences for
them. So I want to do well to be able to inform myself more and to help them, the ones that are
coming behind me that maybe don't have the resources or haven't had the support that I had to go
out there and find out about all the opportunities that surround them and stuff like that.” Her
dedication to supporting these students inspired and encouraged her.
Though her actions may not appear to be open resistance, one form of resistant capital is
nurturing cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), and Julieta attempted to do this through enhancing the
social, familial, and aspirational capital of the other youth group members. Specifically, as a
member of the youth group members’ social networks, she was part of their social capital, and
her experience applying to and being admitted to an elite institution could now serve them in an
important way. Additionally, while these members were not her immediate family, the idea of
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 85
familia, or extended family (which includes friends) plays a role here. Not only was she
maintaining a tie to this community herself, enhancing her familial capital, but she was also
serving as an important resource for her familia. Her specific skillset could help the youth group
members navigate and maneuver certain structures, like college application, that were not
necessarily created with their community in mind, also engaging in navigational capital. This one
story demonstrates several ways in which the participants leveraged their community cultural
wealth and encouraged others to do the same.
Jasmine had a similar mindset, saying “Honestly, it’s because I feel like I didn’t have the
best education growing up, so I kind of want to go back to my community and make sure that
I’m there to help students.” She also spoke of serving as a role model to her younger sisters as
they prepare for college. Laila had an experience with an academic preparation program at her
first college and became a peer mentor through that organization. She said, “I became a mentor
for somebody else, and I loved that job. I got super inspired about first-generation college
students.” For Laila, then, her mentor experience sparked an interest in working with an
oppressed group. This interest in specifically working with an oppressed group is a form of
resistant capital (Yosso, 2005). Though Laila was not necessarily challenging the norms
themselves through her actions, she was challenging the inequalities that exist as a result of the
norms. Despite poor college counseling, uneasy transitions to college, and a lack of college
knowledge, the participants decided to support their communities in hopes of having a positive
impact on future generations.
The idea of giving back to the community is not novel for Latinx students. For example,
several students in Borrero’s (2011) study of Latinx academic achievement mentioned they
wanted to use their success in getting into college as a catalyst to give back to their communities
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 86
and families. Similarly, a student in Schwartz, Donovan, and Guido-DiBrito’s (2009) study of
self-identified Mexican males had a similar desire to give back to his community.
Involvement
Several participants linked their wish to become involved to their mindset of helping
others. This mindset did not exist merely in college, though their college readiness experiences
heightened it. Instead, this was inherent in their high school experiences too, with several of the
women having participated in student groups, like Crossbridge (a college preparation program)
or band. Emely got to the heart of why involvement was important to her when she said, “This
group that I’m leading, LEAP [Latinx Empowering Academic Progression], a subsection of the
LSA, which is Latino Student Association, I feel like, when I go to social events like that, I feel
like what I’m doing matters.” Annabeth saw getting involved with organizations as being part-
and-parcel to college success. She mentioned that involvement is “another side of being ready
for this [college] because you need to be able to know how to make the connections or sustain
relationships with the professors and other people that you meet here.” Specifically, Annabeth
felt that getting involved in organizations helped develop networking skills that she felt were
important in college.
Two of the students took it upon themselves to start an organization where they saw a gap
in serving their community. Annabeth and Emely formed an organization to serve local students.
Annabeth said this about the club:
The club’s purpose is to help encourage and inspire high school students to pursue higher
education. Then, also getting them more college-ready and giving them some of the
knowledge they need to apply to colleges, and what it means to be a student here or a
student in higher education.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 87
For these students, forming this organization was a way for them to be involved on campus while
also helping prepare their community for future college readiness and success. Specifically, as an
organization of Latinx students supporting the mostly-Latinx surrounding community, they
wanted to provide specific supports that would aid this community. This organization took the
form of a mutualista, or mutual aid society, in that it aimed to take the knowledge learned by the
college members back to their home community (Yosso, 2005). This is an important cultural
form of social capital that helps leverage social contacts to support community needs.
Similarly, Julieta became involved with a new student organization for Latino pre-med
students that provided peer mentoring. She saw this as very important to her success at college.
She became involved, though, because she felt that creating a peer group for herself would help
her with her college transition, something she felt she did not get from her college readiness
experiences. Moreover, students like Julieta created organizations to fill voids that existed at the
institution. USW’s leadership is White. Their President, Provost, and a majority of their Deans
are White men. While the Vice President of Student Affairs is Black, there are few Latinx
leaders at the institution. Bell (2000) posited that White leaders rarely invest in minority interests
unless they can identify a direct benefit to themselves.
Some participants did have negative experiences with trying to be involved, though. In
disconfirming evidence, Laila remarked how she wanted to join a sorority. Because she came
from a predominantly White high school and neighborhood, she saw a sorority as providing her a
community like her own, but ultimately said, “I felt very uncomfortable and I ended up not doing
it eventually.” She started to see herself as “just some poor kid,” but sought out other
organizations. Eventually, she became involved with four clubs, including serving as a student
representative for the university program board. Involvement was important for all participants
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 88
because it allowed them the opportunity to give back to their communities, as previously
mentioned, while also finding avenues for navigating college knowledge.
One study found that Latinx students tend to have a higher motivation to lead than their
counterparts from other races (Rosch, Collier, & Thompson, 2015). Similarly, successful first-
generation college students are more likely to become involved in student organizations, which
sometimes serves as a transformative influence (Demetriou, Meece, Eaker-Rich, & Powell,
2017). Hispanic women have also been found to incorporate activism in their leadership roles in
college, often to remedy injustices or challenge norms (Onorato & Droogsma Musoba, 2015).
The aforementioned study took place at a Hispanic-serving institution. USW is not considered
Hispanic-serving, nor would it meet the requirements to be considered as such. However, the
authors did find their research to be consistent with research done at other types of institutions,
including those not designated as Hispanic-serving.
Summary
The participants’ college readiness experiences were important catalysts for them. While
the participants did not highlight how their college readiness impacted academic behaviors in
college, they did provide three important insights. First, they employed help-seeking in
navigating the milieu of campus processes and culture. Second, the students’ experience acted as
an impetus for setting an example to younger students, especially other minoritized students.
Third, and related, this incited them to become involved on campus and in the community.
The participants leveraged and grew their community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) in
several ways. Their parents and familias often fostered aspirational capital within the
participants, encouraging them to set goals despite barriers to those goals, including going to
college. They utilized these aspirational goals as an important form of encouragement as they
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 89
persisted through high school and college. This encouragement from their parents and families
served as a form of familial capital, one that helped the participants decide to give back and serve
their communities. In serving their communities, they used their social capital to help benefit
their familias, including their siblings and youth group members, among others, by forming
organizations and serving as formal and informal mentors. Within these groups, they were able
to help others navigate the milieu of college processes, the important aspect of college readiness
they identified in defining college readiness, as a form of navigational capital. And though none
of the participants talked about openly critiquing established systems, they did utilize resistant
capital to help develop oppositional behavior, including serving as a role model when formal
institutions, like high schools and their college counselors, did not meet the needs of their
communities.
Conclusion
Whereas researchers tend to define college readiness around needing remediation in
college (Conley, 2007, 2010; Duncheon, 2015) and may include cognitive, non-cognitive, and
campus-integration factors in their understandings, the participants in this study defined college
readiness around college knowledge. College knowledge instead focuses on understanding the
processes and culture of institutions (Duncheon, 2015). While all participants would be
considered college-ready by the traditional definitions because none required remediation, none
felt fully college-ready when starting college. This is largely because they defined college
readiness differently from some of the dominant college readiness researchers like Conley (2007;
2010). Their college readiness experiences shaped their experiences and behaviors by inciting
them to serve as examples and give back, get involved in organizations, and develop help-
seeking skills.
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CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION
This study addressed the problem of the disproportionate number of minoritized students
at elite intuitions of higher education who do not feel college-ready. Typical definitions of
college readiness involve beginning college without requiring remediation (Conley, 2007, 2010),
but cognitive, non-cognitive, and campus-integration constructs have been important in college
readiness research (Duncheon, 2015). The least-ready students tend to be African American or
Latinx and from low socioeconomic status, demonstrating this is a pertinent problem (Castro,
2013; National Conference of State Legislators, n.d.; Welner & Carter, 2013). White students
and their Asian counterparts tend to perform better on standardized tests and come to college
more class-prepared (Strayhorn, 2014). This establishes college readiness as a specifically
racialized problem. Specifically, issues of differential racialization (e.g., different races, such as
Asian minorities versus Black and Latinx minorities, receiving certain privileges or oppression)
and the normalization of racism are at play (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). This problem is
important because college education increases lifetime income (Johansen & Arano, 2016),
quality of life (Winters, 2011), and psychic income, or non-material contributions to an
individual’s life satisfaction (Becker, 2015).
The purpose of this study was to illuminate voices of underserved and underprivileged
students related to issues of college readiness at an elite institution to help inform K-12 and
higher education practice. Specifically, few studies use a qualitative lens to understand the
experiences of minoritized students related to college readiness (Reid & Moore, 2008). The
study investigated what strategies the students used to become college-ready, or not, and how
they came to attend a highly selective institution. Specifically, the research looked at how these
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 91
students described overcoming institutional barriers to success and worked to identify tools that
current practitioners could use to prepare students. Two research questions guided this study:
1. In what ways do first-generation Latinx college students at a highly selective institution
define and articulate their own understanding of college readiness as it relates to their
current college experience?
2. What are the perspectives of first-generation Latinx college students at a highly selective
institution of higher education on how college readiness has influenced their behaviors,
actions, and engagement in college?
The research employed qualitative methods because they provide “rich, thick
description” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 256). Moreover, the study utilized a purposeful
selection of participants chosen because of their unique experiences in helping illuminate the
questions of this study, specifically students who identified as minoritized, attending the host site
(a highly selective institution of higher education), and overcame institutional barriers to success.
Critical race theory provided the lens for informing the research because it focuses on counter-
storytelling, helping to illuminate the students’ experiences through their own words and
perspectives (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001).
This chapter provides a brief summary of the findings. Afterwards, implications for
practice are presented. Specifically, two practical implications are discussed: the importance of
college knowledge to high school college counseling and the importance of high school
involvement in college readiness. Next, the study presents implications for research. Last, a
conclusion of the chapter and the dissertation follow.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 92
Brief Summary of Findings
Traditional notions and definitions of college readiness emphasize requiring remediation,
identifying those who require remediation once enrolled as not college-ready and those who do
not require it as being college-ready (Conley, 2007, 2010). Some researchers have expanded
constructs related to college readiness, such as Duncheon’s (2015) constructs of cognitive
factors, non-cognitive factors, and campus-integration factors. However, the participants in this
study centered their definitions around college knowledge, focusing less on cognitive factors and
ignoring aspects of remediation. And while none of the participants required remediation, none
identified as being fully college-ready upon entering college. Though some even mentioned that
they specifically felt academically prepared, they considered poor college counseling in high
school a major factor in their not feeling fully college-ready.
Participants identified several ways in which their college readiness affected their actions
and behaviors in college, though none focused largely on academic behaviors. This is potentially
a result of the participants in this study not requiring remediation, so they had the academic
behaviors necessary. Their focus was instead, then, on other aspects of college readiness. They
first talked about the role help-seeking had in their college experience. Specifically, though they
felt that independence was important in college, they utilized help-seeking to navigate the milieu
of campus climate and processes. Second, they relayed ways in which negative college readiness
experiences encouraged them to set an example for younger students, especially minoritized
students, often acting as mentors. All of the participants became involved in organizations,
several specifically focused on working with minoritized high school students. Having come to
college as “college ready” by the dominant definition of college readiness, not requiring
remediation (e.g., Conley, 2007; 2010; Duncheon, 2015), the participants focused instead on the
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 93
procedural aspects of college and how their insufficient knowledge in this area prompted them to
affect change in different ways for themselves, their families, and their communities.
Implications for Practice
From the participants’ experiences, two major implications for practice emerged. First,
high school counselors should focus on college knowledge in their counseling, even at schools
where they may believe that students receive this knowledge from other sources, such as family
or teachers. Second, high schools should encourage involvement in organizations and other
extra- and co-curricular activities for all students, especially minoritized students, as it can help
them build social capital, can privilege their cultural capital, and encourage social support.
Focus on College Knowledge in High School College Counseling
First-generation college students are less likely to possess the inherent social capital
necessary to acquire college knowledge (Almeida, 2015a). College knowledge is “understanding
the procedural requirements and cultural expectations of college” (Duncheon, 2015, p. 9).
Specifically, the participants in this study were first-generation, so their family was not
necessarily able to instill college knowledge in them. Moreover, they felt they attended high
schools where their counselors either already felt they were getting college knowledge at home
(so, they did not provide it at school) or where the counselors were ill-equipped to provide it.
Despite calls for higher levels of college completion, these calls are moot if students are not
adequately prepared to succeed in today’s higher education landscape (Almeida, 2015a). Perhaps
surprisingly, most students who exit college leave in good academic standing. However, with a
focus on cognitive factors, such as the ability to start college without remediation (Conley, 2007,
2010), this statistic is of concern.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 94
Almeida (2015a) and Roderick et al. (2009) identified college knowledge as a critical
component of college readiness, a component often ignored in other research. Troublingly,
however, most low-income and first-generation college students attend high schools where
college-going is not emphasized (Roderick et al., 2009). And, though larger shares of minoritized
students, like Black and Hispanic students, are attending colleges, the share earning 4-year
degrees is still low. Nagaoka et al. (2009) referred to this as the “aspiration-attainment gap.”
Urban students with college aspirations often lack knowledge about college application
processes and FAFSA (Roderick et al., 2009). The participants in this study identified a lack of
appropriate college counseling in high school as leading to their lack of knowledge in these
areas. They had the appropriate aspirational capital to encourage them to move on, however, they
lacked the procedural knowledge. One reason for this may be that college readiness research
largely focuses on academic factors, such as GPA or meeting minimum admissions
requirements. However, as the women in this study demonstrated, this may not be enough for
students to feel college ready, especially at elite institutions.
Elite colleges are especially important to the success of minority students. Specifically,
minoritized students at elite colleges are more likely to graduate than their peers at other types of
institutions (Melguizo, 2010). However, some of this persistence is attributed to non-cognitive,
non-academic factors, such as leadership. The women in this study specifically said that they
college readiness experiences prompted them to lead. Annabeth, for example, recognized
networking as important in college. Because she did not get well-prepared for networking in high
school, she became involved with student organizations in college to aid her in developing that
skill.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 95
All of this suggests that college counselors in high schools, especially those with high
percentages of students whose parents did not complete college, should focus heavily on college
knowledge in preparing students for college. While college knowledge alone will not guarantee
admission to highly selective institutions, it will prepare students for navigating college
processes in general. Minoritized students often have important forms of navigational capital.
For example, young students whose parents do not speak English often have to help their parents
navigate services as translators (DeNicolo, Gonzáles, Morales, & Romaní, 2015; Yosso, 2005).
Equipped with the appropriate knowledge on how to navigate these collegiate institutions, they
can be encouraged to apply their other navigational capital knowledge to these situations.
Controlling for factors such as race, ethnicity, and income, low-income and non-White
students are more likely than their higher-income and White peers to have the appropriate
college knowledge to get into a 4-year or elite institution (Roderick et al., 2009). This suggests
that college readiness is a racialized endeavor and classic perspectives of liberalism are called
into question. Despite years of affirmative action laws, White students continue to benefit
disproportionately compared to Black students (Ladson-Billings, 1998). For participants in this
study, not until they applied to college did they realize what they did not know, such as
information about taking the essay portion of the ACT or how to navigate FAFSA. This was
exacerbated once they got to college, where they often did not know things like what classes to
take together. For example, Julieta took two science courses in her first semester and didn’t
know until later that she should not “double up on sciences,” as her peers later told her. Through
support of peers, their own independence and help-seeking, and some trial and error, they were
able to develop these skills. This is not to deny the import of academic factors, however. Elite
and selective institutions place a large emphasis on academic performance, including
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 96
standardized tests (Espenshade & Radford, 2009). As a result, minoritized students should still
be equipped with the academic skills necessary to enroll in a wide variety of institution types.
Elite institutions have the potential to close the college completion gap because minoritized
student are more likely to complete degrees at elite institutions than at less-elite institutions
(Melguizo, 2008, 2010). As a result, for those aspiring to elite institutions, college knowledge is
of particular significance.
High School Involvement as a Catalyst of College Readiness
The participants mentioned they became involved in college for various reasons, but
often to build their networks and increase their social capital as it relates to acquiring college
knowledge. Because the participants often did not receive college knowledge advice through
avenues more mainstream students rely on, such as college counselors or their families, high
school involvement may serve to increase students’ social capital. This could help increase
college knowledge while also building networking skills mentioned specifically as important to
college success by Emely and Laila because they viewed faculty interaction and organizational
involvement as important to college success, both related to academics and co-curricular
involvement.
Park and Chang (2015) add an additional unique insight into the importance of
involvement in high school. They found that many students, even those from diverse high
schools, did not have meaningful experiences with diversity. They underscored the importance of
this given the diverse nature of colleges and universities and recommend that colleges must do
more to meaningfully engage students with diversity. High schools, too, could make more efforts
to engage students around issues of diversity through involvement in high schools, encouraging
students to participate in extra-curricular activities, not only building important networking
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 97
skills, but preparing students more fully for the diverse college environment. Though some
critical race theorists and nationalists have advanced that this may benefit the dominant race
more than minoritized individuals (Delgado, 2014; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Nunn, 2014),
others would argue that minoritized individuals may better be able to transform systems from
within them (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). This can help encourage and advantage forms of
community cultural wealth, such as resistant capital (Yosso, 2005), but helping students develop
ways to critique systems while also navigating them.
High school involvement, in addition to building social capital, can help build social
support. Social support among ninth graders was found to have a positive relationship between
the courses they take to make them college-ready and their rates of enrollment in college after
high school (Witkow & Fuligni, 2011). Social support through high school involvement, then,
could have a direct and positive impact on college-going and college readiness for minoritized
students.
Recommendations for Research
Several important recommendations for research have emerged from this. First, further
research should examine the role self-efficacy plays in how students feel college-ready. Second,
because college knowledge is a vast construct, further research could examine what specific
aspects of college knowledge may be most important to students feeling college-ready. Third,
more insight into the role that transformational resistance plays in minoritized students who do
not feel college-ready could illuminate and highlight unique ways students work to disrupt
oppressive structures. Fourth, further research could look at issues of community cultural wealth
in college readiness as they relate to gender, students of other races, and graduate students.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 98
By traditional definitions of college readiness, this study’s participants arrived at college
as college-ready because they did not require remediation (Conley, 2007, 2010; Duncheon,
2015). However, none of the women felt she arrived at college fully college-ready. Some of this
is attributed to the fact that the participants defined college readiness around college knowledge
rather than around remediation or content knowledge. However, this does not preclude that self-
efficacy may play a role in their feelings. Self-efficacy is the belief that one can achieve specific
tasks (Bandura, 1997). Academic self-efficacy is the believe that one can achieve specific
academic tasks (Rayle, Arredondo, & Robinson Kurpius, 2005).
This qualitative study found that college knowledge is of import to college readiness for
minoritized students. However, it did not necessarily understand what specific aspects of college
knowledge may be important. College knowledge can include broad ideas of understanding the
processes and culture of college (Duncheon, 2015) while specifically including aspects of
applying for college, applying for financial aid, and enrolling in courses (Roderick et al., 2009).
While the participants mentioned all these various aspects, further research into each more
specifically may provide more concrete practical implications.
A unique area of research is in transformational resistance (Soló rzano & Bernal, 2001).
Transformation resistance is motivated by social justice and critiques oppression. It speaks out
against inequitable structures while working to build more equitable structures (Soló rzano &
Bernal, 2001). The participants in this study identified some ways in which they engage in
resistance, including engaging as formal and informal mentors and role models to younger
students to help build those younger students’ college readiness, breaking a cycle they felt
tangled in. They, however, did not necessarily indicate that they engaged specifically in
transformational resistance or critiqued existing power structures. Further research could
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 99
examine the role that transformational resistance has among students from minoritized
backgrounds who attend elite institutions and do not feel college-ready along with other ways in
which they work to break the inequitable structures that oppressed them.
This study examined the experiences of Latinx women undergraduate students. However,
further research can use the community cultural wealth framework as it relates to the lived
college readiness experiences of several other groups. Because Black students, for example, are
underrepresented at highly selective institutions (Melguizo, 2010), future research could consider
the experiences of Black and other minoritized students. Further, because issues of college
readiness are differential by gender (Duncheon, 2015), studies could also consider the gendered
issues of college readiness within this framework. The research questions and protocol used in
this study were not appropriate to fully consider these issues within this research. Because the
author works with doctoral students, their specific counterstories would add rich information to
the college readiness story. The opportunity gap framework (Howard; 2010; Ladson-Billings,
2006; Milner, 2010) extends the argument that opportunity gaps can follow individuals, so
further consideration of graduate and doctoral students would be enlightening.
Conclusion
This study yielded several findings related to the college readiness experiences of
minoritized students who attend urban elite institutions. First, these students tend to define
college readiness around the concept of college knowledge rather than around the need for
remediation. Second, even when these participants did not require remediation, they did not feel
fully college-ready. Because of these experiences, the participants engaged in help-seeking and
campus and community involvement to close their readiness gap while serving as peer mentors
and role models to younger students to help break the college readiness cycle they experienced.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 100
Several important implications for practice and research emerged from the findings. First,
high school counselors should understand that minoritized students may not feel college-ready,
even if they are academically prepared, and should additionally focus on college knowledge in
their counseling, even if they believe students may be getting this knowledge from family, peers,
or other sources. Second, because the participants identified involvement as important in college,
and because high school involvement can build social capital and social support (Witkow &
Fuligni, 2011), high school teachers, administrators, and counselors should encourage all
students, especially minoritized students, to engage in extra- and co-curricular involvement in
high school.
This study aimed to use counter-storytelling, or stories from non-dominant and oppressed
groups (Soló rzano & Yosso, 2011), to highlight and illuminate the issues that minoritized
students experience as it relates to college readiness. Privileging the un- and under-privileged is
important to breaking down the structures that oppress minoritized individuals in schools. Using
a critical race theory lens to identify the important findings from the study, the researcher hopes
that further qualitative research in college readiness will emerge as a result of the powerful
stories relayed within this dissertation. The women of this study, with nothing to gain from
participating in the research themselves, provided important insights.
Should the implications of this research be ignored, the opportunity gaps for minoritized
students (Milner, 2010) and college readiness gaps for these students (Duncheon, 2015) may not
close, but, instead, widen. With renewed interests in encouraging college access for all (Almeida,
2015a), practitioners at all levels have a responsibility to close these gaps and encourage both
access and success for students from all backgrounds. This study could serve as one part of that
puzzle as future researchers and practitioners continue in the aim to bridge and close these gaps.
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 101
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Appendix A: Student Interview Protocol
Research Questions:
1. In what ways do first-generation Latinx college students at a highly selective institution
define and articulate their own understanding of college readiness as it relates to their
current college experience?
2. What are the perspectives of first-generation Latinx college students at a highly selective
institution of higher education on how college readiness has influenced their behaviors,
actions, and engagement in college?
Interview Protocol and Questions:
First, thank you for agreeing to this interview. I very much appreciate your time. To start
our interview, I’m going to go over the study. Some of this may seem technical, so let me know
if you have any questions while I’m talking. Feel free to ask questions at any point. This research
is guided by two research questions. The first is “In what ways do first-generation Latinx college
students at a highly selective institution define and articulate their own understanding of college
readiness as it relates to their current college experience?” The second research question is
“What are the perspectives of first-generation Latinx college students at a highly selective
institution of higher education on how college readiness has influenced their behaviors, actions,
and engagement in college?” During this interview, I will ask questions that help to illuminate
your college readiness experiences to help me understand the potential answers to these
questions.
With your permission, I will tape record this interview. However, if you choose not to be
tape recorded, I will just take notes of our interaction. Your willingness to be tape recorded
won’t affect our ability to continue with the interview. If at any time during the interview you
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 119
want me to stop tape recording, you can ask me or stop the recorder yourself. [Give instructions
on how to stop the tape recorder.] If there are any questions you wish not to answer, you are free
not to answer them. If you wish to stop the interview at any time, please let me know and we can
stop the interview. I am going to start with some demographic questions. As with any questions,
you’re free to not answer these, ask me to skip, or stop the recording.
1. To begin, how would you identify your gender?
2. How would you identify your race?
3. Did either of your parents complete college?
4. What year in college are you?
5. Are you a Pell Grant recipient?
6. Based upon your current college experience, what does it mean to be college-ready for
you?
7. What skills did you have that you think helped you succeed here?
8. What skills do you wish were more developed for you that you think would have made it
easier for you to succeed here?
9. [Potential Probing Question] Can you tell me more about that? Why do you think these
would have been more helpful?
10. [Potential Probing Question] In what ways do you think these skills may be different
because you are [Black or Latino/a]?
11. Were there any skills that you realized would have been helpful?
12. [Potential Follow-Up Question] Can you describe a situation where you realized that?
13. Based on your comments about your skills, do you feel you came to college as college-
ready?
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 120
14. [Potential Follow-Up Probing Question If Answer is No] What do you think might have
helped you to be more college-ready?
15. [Potential Follow-Up Probing Question If Answer is Yes] What do you think helped you
to be college-ready?
16. What would you have liked to known prior to attending a university like this one that you
didn’t know?
17. How do you feel your level of college readiness has impacted your actions or behavior?
18. [Potential Probing] For example, do you feel you changed your class-taking, study, or
social habits?
19. How do you feel your level of college readiness has impacted your willingness to do
what it takes to succeed in class?
20. How do you feel your level of college readiness has impacted your involvement with
social events on campus?
21. How do you feel your level of college readiness has impacted your involvement with
student organizations?
22. How do you feel you’ve been able to integrate into the campus culture?
23. What inspired you to apply to this university?
24. Once you were accepted, what inspired you to enroll in the institution?
25. [Potential Probe] What influences might have impacted your decision?

COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 121
Appendix B: Staff Interview Protocol
Opening Script:
First, thank you for agreeing to this interview. I very much appreciate your time. To start
our interview, I’m going to go over the study. Some of this may seem technical, so let me know
if you have any questions while I’m talking. Feel free to ask questions at any point. This research
is guided by two research questions. The first is “In what ways do first-generation Latinx college
students at a highly selective institution define and articulate their own understanding of college
readiness as it relates to their current college experience?” The second research question is
“What are the perspectives of first-generation Latinx college students at a highly selective
institution of higher education on how college readiness has influenced their behaviors, actions,
and engagement in college?” During this interview, I will ask questions that help me understand
the way you and your office support minoritized students related to college readiness.
With your permission, I will tape record this interview. However, if you choose not to be
tape recorded, I will just take notes of our interaction. Your willingness to be tape recorded
won’t affect our ability to continue with the interview. If at any time during the interview you
want me to stop tape recording, you can ask me or stop the recorder yourself. [Give instructions
on how to stop the tape recorder.] If there are any questions you wish not to answer, you are free
not to answer them. If you wish to stop the interview at any time, please let me know and we can
stop the interview.
Interview Questions:
1. Which students do you serve?
2. What are the services your office provides?
3. [Follow-Up] How does this address the needs of your students specifically?
COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 122
4. How do you feel your office meets its students’ needs?
5. What have you found to be some common issues facing your students in your time
working with them?
6. [Follow-up] Were you surprised by any of these issues?
7. [Follow-up] Were there any issues you thought would present themselves that haven’t?
8. How do students interface with your office?
9. How do students find out about the services you offer?

COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 123
Appendix C: Informed Consent Sheet

University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education
Ed.D. in Educational Leadership
404 Waite Phillips Hall

INFORMATION/FACTS SHEET FOR EXEMPT NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH

The College Readiness Experiences of Black and Latinx Students at a Highly Selective
Institution of Higher Education

You are invited to participate in a research study conducted by Patrick Patterson under the
supervision of Dr. Paula Carbone at the University of Southern California because you are an
undergraduate student at USC who identifies by Black or Latinx. Research studies include only
people who voluntarily choose to take part. This document explains information about this study.
You should ask questions about anything that is unclear to you.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

This study aims to understand the college readiness experiences of Black and Latinx students who
attend a highly selective university. It aims to inform secondary and postsecondary administrators
in how to best serve this student population.

PARTICIPANT INVOLVEMENT

If you agree to take part in this study, you will be asked to participate in an in-person audiotaped
interview. These interviews typically will last between 45 and 60 minutes. You will not be required
to answer any question you do not want to, can choose to discontinue the interview at any time,
and will not be audio recorded without your express permission. If at any time during the interview
you wish to discontinue the audio recording but continue the interview, the recording will be
stopped. If you choose not to be recorded, the interviewer will take detailed notes and may capture
some of your direct quotes if possible.

If you agree to participate, you also will be asked to provide documents such as essays submitted
for college admission. You are not required to submit any documentation for your participation,
though.

PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION

You will not be compensated for your participation.

COLLEGE READINESS AS COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 124
CONFIDENTIALITY

Any identifiable information obtained in connection with this study will remain confidential. Your
responses will be coded with a false name (pseudonym) and maintained separately. This file will
specifically be password-protected, in addition to being in a password-protected folder. Your
responses will be transcribed by an external third party (Rev.com), but no identifying information
will be provided to this third party. Only the primary investigator will have access to the key that
codes your pseudonym to your identity.

At the completion of the study, all audio recordings will be destroyed, though transcripts will be
maintained on a password-protected computer. Some information may be contained in a Google
Drive which is password-protected. The data may be used for future research studies.

The members of the research team and the University of Southern California’s Human Subjects
Protection Program (HSPP) may access the data. The HSPP reviews and monitors research studies
to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects.

INVESTIGATOR CONTACT INFORMATION

If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact Patrick
Patterson, Principal Investigator, by phone at 573-823-6773, by e-mail at pdpatter@usc.edu, or in-
person by visiting 404 Waite Phillips Hall.

IRB CONTACT INFORMATION

If you have questions, concerns, or complaints about your rights as a research participant or the
research in general and are unable to contact the research team, or if you want to talk to someone
independent of the research team, please contact the University Park Institutional Review Board
(UPIRB), 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or
upirb@usc.edu.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This qualitative study applied a critical race theory lens to understand minoritized students’ college readiness experiences at a highly selective research university to inform K-12 and higher education practice. The purpose of this study was to privilege oppressed voices in highlighting specific ways the college readiness gap can be closed for minoritized students, moving toward equity in higher education attainment and completion. The research questions involve understanding these students’ college readiness and how they informed their college experiences. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews developed with a critical race lens to encourage counter-storytelling among the participants. Findings indicate participants tend to define college readiness around college knowledge, rather than more traditional notions of remediation. Additionally, even when the women came to college as college-ready by these traditional notions, they often did not feel fully college-ready. Findings imply that high school counselors should focus on college knowledge in their counseling, even if they believe students receive this knowledge elsewhere. Moreover, practitioners should understand that cultural dissonance may exist between students’ home cultures and school cultures and work to diminish this dissonance while supporting students in navigating it. Moreover, because involvement in college was important to helping students build the social capital necessary to navigate college knowledge, high school teachers, administrators, and counselors should encourage similar forms of involvement in high school. Conclusions suggest specific ways in which practitioners and researchers can enhance the college readiness experiences for these minoritized students.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Patterson, Patrick Dale (author)

Core Title ""Having the right info"": College readiness as college knowledge among minoritized students in an urban education setting

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education (Leadership)

Publication Date 04/03/2018

Defense Date 03/05/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag college knowledge,college readiness,community cultural wealth,education,Latinx,minoritized,OAI-PMH Harvest,Urban Education

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Carbone, Paula M. (committee chair), Crawford, Jenifer (committee member), Hinga, Briana (committee member)

Creator Email pdpatter@rossier.usc.edu,pdpatter@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-489511

Unique identifier UC11267372

Identifier etd-PattersonP-6136.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-489511 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-PattersonP-6136.pdf

Dmrecord 489511

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Patterson, Patrick Dale

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA