Graduate Enrollment

Graduate enrollment allows individuals to pursue their intellectual interests in greater depth. It also provides them with access to careers that require an advanced degree, such as law, medicine, and university-level teaching.

• First-generation status is a factor in graduate enrollment.

Overall, 30 percent of 1992–93 bachelor’s degree recipients had enrolled in a graduate or first-professional program by 1997, but first-generation students were less likely than their peers whose parents had bachelor’s or advanced degrees to have done so (25 versus 34 percent) (Choy 2000). This relationship held even after controlling for other factors significantly related to graduate enrollment including age, undergraduate major, GPA, and race/ethnicity, and also after controlling for selected other factors including sex, amount borrowed as an undergraduate, and control of institution attended. First-generation students were as likely as others to enroll in MBA or other master’s degree programs, but less likely to enroll in doctoral degree programs (figure 11). They were less likely than those whose parents’ had a bachelor’s degree or higher to enroll in a first-professional degree program.