BREAKING THE CYCLE? AN EXPLORATION OF ACADEMIC MATCHING AND RURAL STUDENTS' COLLEGE CHOICE PROCESSES

Abstract

The issue of academic undermatching involves students enrolling at colleges and universities below the level of selectivity to which their academic profiles indicate they could gain admission. Undermatching has received significant attention because students who undermatch have been shown to experience less favorable outcomes than their peers who match, including lower levels of satisfaction with the college experience, lower graduation rates, lower rates of full-time employment, and lower annual incomes. Undermatching has also been found to occur with much greater frequency among various populations of students, including those of low socioeconomic status (SES), underrepresented racial and ethnic minority identities, and first-generation college students. The extant literature focuses almost exclusively on students from those groups. Research has also, however, identified a geographic component to undermatching, as rural students have been found to undermatch at significantly higher rates than their urban and suburban counterparts. Interestingly, rural students are less likely than nonrural students to attend selective institutions even after controlling for SES and academic preparedness, as well as other demographic and high school achievement variables. While the nature of the academic undermatching that occurs among rural students appears to be distinct from that which occurs among nonrural students, there are no qualitative studies focused on the intersection of rurality and academic matching. In fact, students from rural backgrounds are largely ignored in the broader literature on access and equity in higher education. This study seeks to address current gaps in the literature by focusing exclusively on rural students and employing a qualitative design to explore more deeply their college choice processes and experiences at a large urban public research university.