Stratified strategies? Gender, social background and access to selective fields in Norway

Fields of study are segregated along the lines of social class and gender. The most.prestigious and selective professional fields, such as medicine or law, are persistently.dominated by socially privileged students but have undergone a pronounced.feminization in recent decades. We first investigate gender and SES differences in.strategies, in admission chances and whether strategies mediate these differences.Second, we explore how gender and SES interact in shaping applicants’ strategies and.their admission chances. Third, we consider the role of students’ GPA and how.different social groups use compensatory strategies to enhance their chances of.admission. The Norwegian context is well suited to study this topic because of its.comprehensive education system and its field-specific selectivity in higher education,which is mainly based on candidates’ grade point average (GPA), but also offers.opportunities to invest in certain strategies to gain access to the most prestigious fields.of study. Using full population register data and discrete survival models, we find that.high-SES candidates and women have a greater chance of getting admitted, which is.mainly explained by their higher GPA. High-SES and male applicants are somewhat.more likely to use strategies to meet admission criteria that the Norwegian admission.system offers, especially if they have low GPAs, indicating a system of compensatory.advantage. However, these overall small differences in strategies seem to perpetuate.already existing inequalities rather than increasing or alleviating them. • We study gender and SES differences in access to prestigious fields of study in Norway. • We ask whether these differences relate to institutional selection practices and related strategies? • High-SES and female applicants have a higher admission probability, with stronger SES differences. • This is mainly explained by their higher GPA. • Group differences in strategies are visible, especially among applicants with low GPAs. • These differences perpetuate already existing inequalities.