Attending a high-achieving school can increase the social cost of achievement for students of color for allegedly "acting white" among their peers, according to a new study in the November/December issue of Child Development.

Thomas E. Fuller-Rowell '10, HD graduate and now research fellow at the University of Michigan, led researchers at Cornell in analyzing data on more than 100,000 students of black, white, Asian, Native American and Hispanic students in grades 7-12 from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. They compared students' grade point averages with a measure of students' feelings of loneliness, social support, and sense of belonging.

"We already know that social acceptance is one of the primary concerns of adolescence,” said Fuller-Rowell. “If achievement comes at a social cost, there are obviously going to be differences in teenagers' motivation to achieve." Read the full story