Hispanic/Latinx STEM Majors Applying to Graduate School: The Role of Family, Peers, and Undergraduate Research Programs in Facilitating Community Cultural Wealth

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the critical transition from undergraduate to graduate biomedical education and focuses on Hispanic/Latinx students who participated in a biomedical undergraduate research program at a Hispanic-Serving Institution located on the US-Mexico border. We use the community cultural wealth (CCW) framework to analyze 13 qualitative interviews about students’ experiences applying to graduate school in biomedical fields and how different program activities allowed students to navigate the graduate school application process. Our findings suggest that different programmatic activities (research experiences, research mentorship, workshops, family involvement, and advising) facilitated students’ graduate school application process by enhancing different types of cultural capital: aspirational, familial, social, navigational, and resistant.

KEYWORDS:

• Undergraduate research experiences
• graduate school
• Hispanic
• Latinx
• HSI

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the participants in this study and Aleida Ramirez for her valuable contributions to this research project.

Disclosure statement

No relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report

Notes

¹ While the term “Latinx” is more widely use in the literature, our participants identify as “Hispanic,” due to preferences of the particular region of the U.S. We, therefore, use the more encompassing term “Hispanic/Latinx” throughout the article to acknowledge both identity preferences.

Additional information

Funding

Research reported in this paper was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under linked award numbers RL5GM118969, TL4GM118971, and UL1GM118970. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.