Indeed, as early as 1966, University of Chicago sociologist James Davis published research demonstrating that a student who attends a school that is out of his academic league is often put at a professional disadvantage. In "The Campus as a Frog Pond: An Application of the Theory of Relative Deprivation to Career Decisions of College Men," Davis controlled for entering academic credentials and compared students at schools of different academic rank, examining their career choices to see which pursued "high performance" careers (in law, medicine, science, etc.). He found that college GPA correlated more strongly to career choice than did the academic rank of the school attended. He explained this finding in terms of the "theory of relative deprivation," under which students can be expected to measure their own potential in comparison to their immediate classmates, generally using one another's grades as "the accepted yardstick." Davis put his conclusion in somewhat quaint terms. "Counselors and parents might well consider the drawbacks as well as the advantages of sending a boy to a ‘fine' college, if, when doing so, it is fairly certain he will end up in the bottom ranks of his graduating class," he wrote. Davis's research spawned a cottage industry in sociological studies on the hazards of being a "small frog" in a "big pond."

The Sad Irony of Affirmative Action > Publications > National Affairs Wednesday, February 26, 2014 @ 11:28pm