When Things Don’t Go as Planned: Contingencies, Cultural Capital, and Parental Involvement for Elite University Admission in China

Studies often portray cultural capital as a constant source of advantage. Yet this perspective underemphasizes the importance of activating cultural capital as a prerequisite for elite families to accrue its benefits. Using ethnography and interviews with elite students and parents in two top-performing public high schools in Beijing, I find that elite parents typically relied on the school to prepare children for college. However, they activated cultural capital and became heavily involved when their children experienced academic setbacks, which put elite university admission at risk. In many but not all instances, parental involvement buffered children from test failures and provided children with additional chances to pursue elite university admission. The findings show that parental activation of cultural capital is not constant, but reactive and not always effective. Using the examples of Chinese students, I argue for the contingent nature of parental involvement and highlight the limits of cultural capital.