Project Title: Social Mobility of U.S. Colleges
BASIS Advisor: Jeff Loomis
Internship Location: Case Western University
Onsite Mentor: Professor Daniel Shoag
The American Dream is becoming less attainable every year. As a student applying to college, I wondered if college can be a catalyst of social and economic mobility. After seeing how my grandparents leveraged education to escape poverty, I want to increase the social mobility of U.S. colleges so they we can give low-income families equal opportunities to benefit themselves and society. I am working remotely with a professor who has experience in the economics I am studying and I hope to study aspects of such along with sociology, psychology, and statistics to further my solutions. Harvard economist Raj Chetty created a tool to track a college’s social mobility, which is equal to the access rate (students from bottom 20%) times the success rate (students from the bottom 20% who move up to the top 20%). I am focusing my research mainly on the access rates. I believe increasing awareness about a university, whether it be through information panels, college athletics, etc. will increase the access rates. I believe the best solutions will be writing papers to spread awareness about the issue, but also implementing policies within universities to perhaps create better financial aid packages. Our universities have much to offer to low-income students and I hope to contribute to more of them being given an opportunity to succeed.
My Posts
Week 10: Speaking with a Financial Aid Officer + Wrapping Up
Welcome back everyone! This past week, I spoke to a William and Mary financial aid officer regarding the financial aid process and how we can improve the financial aid system to increase access rates at these colleges. Some of the first questions I asked him were regarding the complexity of the financial aid system and […]
Weeks 8 & 9: Financial Aid and Scholarships
Welcome back everyone! I’ve been busy with APs, so I haven’t had much of a chance to update you all on my project. Throughout my research, I have always thought about the best way to improve college social mobility. Would it be best to make college free, significantly reduce the price, expand scholarships, improve financial […]
Week 7: Asking Questions
Welcome back everyone! Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten any responses from some of the people I have been trying to contact, so I am trying to find new people to contact. In earlier blogs, I talked about how I am using data from Harvard economist Raj Chetty to create models regarding social mobility. I went back […]
Week 6: College Questionnaire + Pain
Welcome back to my blog everyone! Unfortunately, I have been a bit under the weather the past few days, so I just continued to research what I have covered for the previous weeks. I’m trying to get in contact with a few experts from different fields (college admissions officers, financial aid officers, politicians) to learn […]
Week 5: Psychology & Poverty
Welcome back to my blog everyone! This past week, I spent time researching how much being in poverty actually affects one’s mental health. One reason social mobility is low is because of the many psychological barriers low-income individuals face, in addition to the ones placed on them by society. A study by researchers from Harvard, […]
Week 4: March Madness & Mobility
Welcome back to my blog everyone! With March Madness going on, I thought about ways I could connect the tournament to my senior project. The tournament brings both excitement and disappointment for fans and for people trying to get the perfect bracket. I would’ve had a perfect bracket if Oral Roberts didn’t beat Ohio State […]
Week 3: City Structure
Welcome back everyone! This past week, I researched how city structure affects social mobility. The future of America’s social mobility lies in our metropolitan cities. The problem is many of the “big” cities across the country are highly economically segregated. Cities that are more economically segregated tend to have lower mobility rates. This may make […]
Week 2: Free College?
Welcome back, everyone! This week, I spent time researching ways to increase access rates, specifically about the prospect of “free college”. The idea of free public colleges has been picking up steam over the past few years, which made me wonder if this was an economically viable option to increase low-income student enrollment and graduation […]
Week 1: Introduction and Research
Hello everyone! I’m Neel and my senior project is on social mobility and how colleges play a role in moving disadvantaged students up the income distribution. You may have heard about the “American Dream”, the idea that anyone can make it to the top regardless of their situation. But as of recently, the numbers show […]