Do black Americans really have a “net advantage” in postsecondary education as suggested by prior studies? What does net black advantage mean and how might we reconcile findings of net black advantage with extensive evidence of black underrepresentation in four-year colleges and highly selective postsecondary institutions in particular? This dissertation applies a model of college choice to address these questions, structuring analysis of postsecondary pathways and developing new and empirically grounded ways of conceptualizing net black advantage. Informed by empirical results, this dissertation argues that net black advantage should be conceptualized primarily as the result of college application behaviors and their antecedents rather than admissions decisions.

This dissertation applies a college choice model to decompose net black advantage into discrete stages of postsecondary application, admission, enrollment, and degree completion. At each stage in the educational pathway, starting prior to college entry and continuing through college graduation, the dissertation uses statistical models to reveal previously hidden sources of inequality throughout the postsecondary pipeline that are not apparent in prior studies that examine postsecondary enrollment as an isolated outcome.

After briefly defining net black advantage in the first chapter and theorizing about its causes in the second chapter, I present findings from an empirical chapter on applications which indicates substantial variation among groups of students in both quantity of college applications and quality of target colleges. Subsequent chapters build on the analysis of college applications to address speculations in the literature about college admissions preferences for black students, especially in elite college settings. Repeating a similar methodology in each empirical chapter, the dissertation tests whether net black advantages exist, conditional upon application to college, for enrollment and graduation. The dissertation concludes by synthesizing findings and implications and recommending ways to more accurately conceptualize net black advantage in light of both empirical findings and a priori theories.