Undergraduate Origins of American Scientists

Abstract

An analysis of the college attendance or college choice for four high-aptitude, high-school senior samples suggests that the differential institutional productivity of scientists and scholars is a function of the differential college attendance, paternal vocational motivations, and their implied correlates among high-aptitude students. This formulation appears to be more probable for males than for females. The institutional productivity hypothesis proposed in previous studies is not supported by the present evidence (14).