Race, Friends, and College Readiness: Evidence from the High School Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Close friends are likely to transmit influence on students’ educational attitudes and decisions that are independent of students’ own background abilities and motivations. However, previous research suggests that close friends may have uneven effects on educational outcomes by race and ethnicity. We analyze the impact of close friends who are college bound on students’ college readiness using new and restricted panel data from the High School Longitudinal Study (2009–2011). Descriptive analyses suggest that having a college-bound friend is positively associated with college readiness and that these impacts are felt by racial and ethnic subgroups in separate and unique ways. Results from propensity score models suggest that while having a college-bound friend generally yields positive effects on all students, it has a more consistent effect on white students’ college readiness compared with Asians, blacks, and Latinos. A formal sensitivity analysis suggests that these treatment effects are robust to the confounding influence of an unobserved confounder.