Jayanti Owens

Research has not investigated how much of the previously documented positive association between high school religious service attendance and college grades is mediated by campus religious group participation. Nor do we know whether campus religious group involvement is an important mediator for black and Hispanic students who experience grade-lowering stereotype threat at historically white institutions. Path analyses conducted on a racially diverse sample of students at 28 elite institutions indicate that religious group involvement in college mediates the positive relationship between high school service attendance and college grades for Hispanic and to some extent black students. For Asian and white students, high school service attendance is positively associated with grades net of religious group involvement on campus. Asians frequently attending high school services on average earn a grade-point average of 0.12 points above Asians who never attended, net of controls.

We hypothesize that the manner in which stereotype threat affects college-grade achievement is mediated by institutional context as well as individual characteristics. Drawing on a sample of black students from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen, we find weak and inconsistent evidence that institutional characteristics influence the operation of stereotype threat. We find more consistent evidence to indicate that the effect of stereotype threat is conditioned by individual factors such as skin colour, multiracial origins and an integrated upbringing. Most of the effect on grade achievement occurs through the internalization pathway, in which the internalization of negative stereotypes leads to disinvestment manifested by a reduction in academic effort. The reduction in work effort, in turn, lowers grades. We also find evidence that immigrant origin confers protection from the negative effects of stereotype threat through both internalization and externalization mechanisms, although the ultimate effect of grade achievement is rather small.

Stereotype threat is a widely supported theory for understanding the racial achievement gap in college grade performance. However, today’s minority college students are increasingly of immigrant origins, and it is unclear whether two dispositional mechanisms that may increase susceptibility to stereotype threat are applicable to immigrants. We use survey data to examine whether and how negative-ability stereotypes affect the grades of 1,865 first-, second-, and third-generation or higher (domestic) minority students at 28 selective American colleges. Structural equation model results indicate that first-generation immigrants are highly resistant to both dispositional identity threat mechanisms we consider. Second-generation immigrants experience only certain dispositional elements of identity threat. Drawing on research in social psychology, we suggest immigrants tend to resist stereotype threat in part due to the primacy of their immigrant identities and their connectedness to the opportunity structure of mainstream society.

A growing body of research examines the effects of state affirmative action bans on domestic minority students’ application and admission rates. This study expands previous research, considering how Texas's implementation of a race-neutral percent plan influenced admission opportunities for two understudied groups: foreign students and in-state Black and Hispanic immigrants. Using a census of all applicants to Texas's flagship universities—University of Texas-Austin (UT) and Texas A&M (A&M)—between 1992 and 2002, descriptive analysis and logistic regressions help examine how the passage of the Top Ten Percent Plan influenced selectivity in terms of observed admission rates and counterfactual admission probabilities for students of varying SAT scores and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) versus non-STEM-proposed majors for foreign students compared to a variety of in- and out-of-state Black and Hispanic immigrants and domestic minorities. Findings point to salient institutional differences in selectivity for foreign applicants. The surge in UT's foreign applicant numbers post–Top Ten led to significant decreases in admission rates and increases in average SAT score and STEM foreign admits. Post–Top Ten A&M, on the other hand, maintained numbers of foreign admits on par with UT by accepting a significantly larger percentage of less selective foreign applicants.