Persistence in Science of High-Ability Minority Students, Phase IV: Second Follow-Up

This research project is a follow-up to previous research on the persistence of high ability minority youth in college programs for mathematics, science, engineering, premedicine and predentistry. The earlier research used data retrieved from the 1985 College Board files for 5,602 students with SAT mathematical scores of 550 or above. All were minority students except for a comparison sample of 404 White students. In 1987, a first follow-up was conducted. 61 percent of the non-Asian American minority students had enrolled in college and were majoring in MSE fields in comparison with 55 percent of the White students and 70 percent for the Asian American students. In the current phase of this research, the original sample will be resurveyed, five years after high school graduation. A subsample will be interviewed in-depth. The major goal of this phase will be to answer three critical questions: which sample members are still studying or employed in MSE fields, what are their unique characteristics, and what are the theoretical and national policy implications of the results. This project is jointly supported by the Studies and Analysis and the Research in Teaching and Learning Programs.

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