Table 3.
Percentage Who Applied to Four-Year Institutions, by Cohort and Sector
| Percentage who applied to a 4-year institution |
Percentage who applied to a private selective 4-year institution |
Percentage who applied to a public selective 4-year institution |
|||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High school cohort | 1982 | 1992 | 2004 | 1982 | 1992 | 2004 | 1982 | 1992 | 2004 |
| U.S. average | 38.2 | 46.5 | 53.2 | 4.8 | 6.7 | 6.2 | 8.8 | 11.9 | 12.8 |
| Test quintile | |||||||||
| 1st | 12.3 | 18.2 | 23.8 | 0.1 | 0.7 | 0.7 | 0.7 | 1.7 | 2.5 |
| 2nd | 19.5 | 32.9 | 37.8 | 0.8 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 2.2 | 5.3 | 4.5 |
| 3rd | 31.0 | 47.1 | 53.9 | 1.7 | 3.2 | 2.7 | 5.3 | 8.8 | 9.5 |
| 4th | 51.9 | 64.3 | 67.6 | 4.1 | 7.2 | 5.8 | 12.6 | 16.0 | 18.1 |
| 5th | 77.8 | 81.7 | 84.8 | 17.0 | 22.8 | 20.4 | 23.8 | 29.3 | 30.1 |
| Region | |||||||||
| New England | 46.7 | 59.5 | 62.9 | 13.9 | 19.9 | 14.4 | 9.0 | 12.5 | 12.3 |
| Middle Atlantic | 40.5 | 55.9 | 59.9 | 9.5 | 14.9 | 10.4 | 7.1 | 12.9 | 12.0 |
| South | 35.4 | 46.0 | 55.2 | 2.1 | 4.3 | 5.4 | 7.5 | 10.6 | 12.7 |
| Midwest | 40.2 | 48.7 | 55.9 | 1.9 | 3.2 | 4.2 | 11.2 | 13.9 | 16.7 |
| Southwest | 37.4 | 39.1 | 49.2 | 1.6 | 3.1 | 2.4 | 6.8 | 8.7 | 7.6 |
| West | 31.6 | 36.7 | 42.5 | 5.1 | 5.8 | 6.0 | 9.2 | 11.3 | 11.1 |
Sources: National Center for Education Statistics, National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS72), High School and Beyond (HSB82), National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS92), and Educational Longitudinal Survey (ELS04). The cohort year refers to the year on-time students would have graduated high school.
Notes: Data are representative of high school seniors for the cohorts indicated. Application behavior is based on the top two school choices of respondents. Geography is according to the high school of the student. The test quintile comes from a survey-specific cognitive test battery given to the respondents of each survey during the spring of their senior year; by construction, it is normalized by cohort. (The test batteries are similar but not identical across surveys.) See the online Data Appendix available at ⟨http://e-jep.org⟩ for the definitions of selective schools and the regional breakdowns.