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The process by which students decide whether and where to attend college has been based most commonly on a college-choice model that is independent of the students' geographic context. However, the ability to attend college close to home is often among the most important factors that U.S. high school students, especially minorities and the socioeconomically disadvantaged, consider. The study presented here mapped the place of residence of a national sample of high school seniors, as well as the location of all colleges within commuting distance of each student, and showed that seniors have a wide range of colleges in proximity. Furthermore, after taking account of important student and zip code-level factors, the study found that each additional college in proximity is associated with a small but significant increase in the odds of applying to college, especially a four-year college. These findings suggest that researchers should stop treating the college-choice process as though it were independent of location and start situating this process within the geographic context in which it occurs.
The process by which students decide whether and where to attend college has been based most commonly on a college-choice model that is independent of the students' geographic context. The fre- quently used three-stage model described by Hossler and Gallagher (1 987) highlights the temporal sequence of the process: (1) the predisposition stage, which typically occurs during primary and secondary school and is made up of activities that influence a stu- dent's inclination to go to college (e.g., col- lege preparation courses, meetings with guidance counselors, and preparation for entrance examinations); (2) the search stage, which typically occurs during high school and involves identifying specific institutions, gath- ering information, taking entrance examina- tions, and applying to colleges; and (3) the choice stage, which typically occurs toward the end of high school, when students receive admissions notices and financial aid offers and select an institution in which to enroll and attend. Although this model has proved to be extremely useful, its focus on the temporal sequence of the college-choice process has by and large taken the spotlight off the geographic context in which college choices are made. In particular, the search stage assumes that students give consideration to all appropriate institutions, regardless of where...