Abstract
There is a remarkable difference among the types of high school in the Turkish education system interms of the level of academic achievement. The present paper aims to investigate the fundamental dynamics ofthis difference in terms of the economic, human, social, and cultural capital that students have inherited from theirfamilies. To analyze the relationships among these different forms of capital, the research reported here hasemployed a mixed-methods approach involving qualitative and quantitative data collected with a survey, duringinterviews and from observations, which once converged have been analyzed in an eclectic approach. The paperconcludes that Turkish high school students raised in families rich in economic, human, social, and cultural capitaltend to be more successful when they attend scientific high schools and Anatolian high schools, given the morebalanced mobility offered by these forms of capital.