Lan Gao

This study draws upon cultural capital theory and exploits 25 individual cases of students in a middle-size city in China in order to understand the patterns of college planning process of students with different socio-economic status. This study will enrich cultural capital theory by applying it to the transitional period of China in which the transformation of classes is complex and distinctive and also contribute to the understandings of the impacts of class-based cultural capital on student college-going behavior in China.

Lan Gao is a senior project analyst in Institutional Research, the Office of the Provost at Harvard University.