Students attain cultural knowledge to navigate college admissions, yet few studies investigate when and how students activate this knowledge in a relatively transparent system. Drawing upon 26 Taiwanese student interviews, this study unveils how students strategically use available information to illuminate each step of the admission process. I…

Students from low-income families consistently trail behind their peers in retention and degree attainment. Research on college student experiences suggests that low-income students experience "cultural mismatch" at college--they feel that their backgrounds are at odds with the middle-class values dominant on campus (Armstrong &…

In a doctoral study undertaken at Edith Cowan University the author set out to investigate the influence of home and school environments on the academic performance and educational/occupational aspirations of high school students from eight Chinese-Australian and Anglo-Australian families residing in a middle class suburb of Perth metropolitan…