SMART TEENS RUB OFF TEAMMATES
A new study of high
school activities bears this message for incoming high school students: Play
what the smart kids play.
Joining an
extra-curricular team or club with members that get good grades can double a
high school student's odds of going to college.
And Brigham Young
University sociologist and study co-author Lance Erickson knows how to sell the
study to teens.
"Tell your
parents, whatever they ground you from, it shouldn't be from practice or a club
activity," said Erickson. "If they ground you from a school club, you
are more likely to end up living at their house because you won't be going to
college."
Erickson spent four
years constructing a dataset and statistical model that could answer critics'
arguments. The sample includes 90,000 high school students and up to 10 of
their friends. Since friends often join a team or club together, the model
subtracts out the positive influence of friends who are also teammates. That
isolates the impact of teammates who aren't otherwise in a student's social circle.
To the surprise of the
researchers, the type of team or club didn't really matter. It simply came down
to being around high-achieving peers (as measured by GPA). So in one school
that might be the swim team or the orchestra, while at another school it's the
computer science club or cross country.
"Typically you
think the benefits of participating come from the type of club or the intensity
of the skills you learned there," said Ben Gibbs, the lead study author.
"I think we're the first to show that who you are hanging out with in
those activities really matters."
The study is
forthcoming in Social Science Research, which posted an accepted
version of the report. As noted in the study, simply participating in any
extracurricular activity increased a student's chances of college enrollment
regardless of that team's average GPA. In addition, the odds of college
enrollment double for a student if they join a group with an average GPA that
is 1 point higher -- i.e. one with a 3.6 GPA rather than a team with a 2.6 GPA.
The role of teammates
is an added piece of a puzzle that co-author Mikaela Dufur started in 2007.
That's when she published research showing that playing high school sports
increased women's chances of getting a college degree.
She notes that providing
extra-curricular activities can be especially critical in schools that serve
low-income students. And the earlier the start, the better.
"I would
encourage middle schools and junior high schools to devote resources to those
kinds of things so that as they transition to high school, they are prepared to
join a team," Dufur said.
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