Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Department of Social Sciences - Berlin Graduate School of Social Science

Cohort

BGSS Generation 2025

Title

Gatekeeping Opportunities: How Institutional Admission Systems Shape Social Inequality in Access to Higher Education

Supervisor

Prof. Johannes Giesecke 

Abstract

Over several decades, research has consistently shown that access to higher education is socially stratified. Studies have identified key social processes contributing to this unequal access, commonly distinguishing between primary effects, which refer to performance differences associated with social origins, and secondary effects, which capture differences in educational decision-making net of performance. However, inequality in access to higher education is shaped not only by individual performance and educational choices but also by institutional admission criteria, which structure how students and their families can mobilize resources to transmit advantages across generations.

This is particularly evident in highly selective degree programs, where admission is based on specific criteria and which, due to their high prestige and substantial income returns, play a crucial role in the intergenerational reproduction of social inequality. Nevertheless, institutional constraints originating within the higher education system have rarely been the focus of existing research. Despite their central role in shaping access to higher education, we still know relatively little about how admission criteria influence social inequality across different stages of the educational trajectory.

In my dissertation, I therefore examine the impact of admission criteria and their role in the (re-)production of social inequality in access to selective and prestigious degree programs. The dissertation focuses on three stages of the transition to higher education at which processes of social inequality reproduction are particularly likely to occur: the realization of educational aspirations in application behavior, admission outcomes, and the (long-term) coping with application rejections

Institution

Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Employee Profile)