“Top Student, Top School? is an important, well-conceived, and well-written study. The topic addressed is of critical importance. Higher education is meant to facilitate social mobility, but a large body of research suggests it instead reproduces inequality. Here Alexandria Walton Radford gives us a much better understanding of the mechanisms that prevent higher education from achieving this central goal.”

“Education is supposed to be the great equalizer. The mixed methods evidence presented by Alexandria Walton Radford in Top Student, Top School? insightfully shows why this still may not be true in the United States. She demonstrates that even the most high-achieving and motivated students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds need a steady supply of accurate information and guidance about every step of the college destination process in order to make similar college choices as their peers from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.”

“Ample research has shown that academic preparation is an important predictor of postsecondary enrollment and success as well as an important factor explaining the social class gap in college choices and outcomes. What Top Student, Top School? illuminates is the power of social class to influence pathways even for students who are academically prepared to pursue higher education—indeed who are prepared to enroll in educational institutions at the top of the hierarchy. It is a well-crafted and insightful study of the college-choice process and the role of social class in shaping educational decisions and postsecondary trajectories.”

“Radford has carefully documented an ongoing polarisation of privilege while putting forward pragmatic suggestions for improvement.”

“In the college admissions process, America’s brightest high school seniors compete on anything but a level playing field. In examining how valedictorians and their parents negotiate the six stages of the process—predisposition, preparation, exploration, application, admissions, and matriculation—higher education expert Radford (No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admissions) provides a wealth of data on the key role of ‘socioeconomic status’.”

“Top Student, Top School? is accessible, insightful, and clearly written. The story Radford tells is a disappointing one that highlights the intransigence of social class in shaping educational outcomes and the inadequacies of the college guidance that the high-achieving students in Radford’s study received from their high schools. It shines light on the mechanisms that sort even the highest-performing students into predictable paths based on their social class.”

“A valuable contribution to our knowledge on class inequalities in college destinations. While scholars have recognized that class affects educational transitions even when holding academic performance constant, to my knowledge no one has specifically examined how class affects academically elite students’ postsecondary transitions. Radford’s book starkly shows these effects exist and are large, informs us of how they happen, and points to ways policy makers can counteract them to increase the representation of high-achieving, low-SES students in selective colleges. Selective colleges in the United States have the mission of developing the talents of the most academically successful students, but Radford’s book demonstrates they are failing to fulfill it, making her findings all the more powerful and necessary.”