Classmates or Colleagues? How Elite Students Learn to Manage One Another

Abstract

Using 122 interviews, this study examines how students at one elite U.S. university conceptualized the impacts of extracurricular participation during college. Scholars have argued that activities can yield valuable forms of capital for students at the primary, secondary, and college levels, yet these processes remain undertheorized. Applying Bourdieusian field theory, I found that respondents perceived three structural parallels between their student organizations and actual workplace contexts. Through clubs, students socialized one another to adopt new relational orientations that anticipated future careers navigating institutional hierarchies. Despite their university’s supposedly endless resources for activities, students paradoxically restricted one another’s access to clubs through elaborate recruitment practices that mirrored job hiring. Within clubs, respondents described learning to manage one another and relate in a detached manner as colleagues, rather than friends. While past research has explored how extracurricular activities shape individual outcomes, this study reveals how students themselves perceived the impacts of club involvement, specifically in an elite institutional context. Respondents’ experiences suggest that extracurricular activities may represent a key site of “status degradation ceremonies” that ultimately enhance elite institutions’ consecrating function.