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whitakk 's review for:
Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality
by Elizabeth A. Armstrong
In some ways this is unlike anything else I've ever read - it's a book-length report on a single multi-year study of 50 women that started in the same dorm at a public university. The central premise is that most students follow one of three pathways: "a party path" focused on social capital and generally relying on financial support from parents; a "professional path" focused on academic success and generally relying on more practical support from parents; and a "mobility path" focused on moving up from economic disadvantage. That finding is pretty interesting, and it's oddly neat to read about the college experience through the eyes of a sociologist -- but ultimately I only got halfway through the book, and while there are very important themes in here I'm not sure one study at one school is enough to fully flesh them out.