Fields of Study, College Selectivity, and Student Inequalities in Higher Education*

Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth we examine processes by which students enter lucrative fields of study, selective colleges, and lucrative fields within selective colleges. We code fields by their graduates' average monthly income and use average incoming student's SAT scores to measure selectivity. We find that: (1) males are much more likely to enter fields of study with higher economic returns than are females; (2) socioeconomic factors do not affect chances of entry into lucrative fields net of other background factors, but SES predicts entry into selective colleges and lucrative fields within selective colleges; (3) measured academic ability is an important predictor for all dependent variables.