Questions:

1. Would you describe yourself as:

- American Indian/Native American
- Asian
- Black/African American
- White/Caucasian
- Pacific Islander
- Other
2. Are you paying for the majority of your college expenses through:
- Scholarships
- FAFSA (grants, work studies, loans)
- Personal Loans
- Personal Finances
- Other
3. Did you attend a community college?
- Yes, and have only been to a community college
- Yes, and then I transferred to a 4-year university
- No, I went straight to a 4-year University
- No, I went straight into the work field
- Other
4. If you answered yes to attending a community college, do you feel that your learning
experience was adequate?
- Yes
- No
- I did not attend a community college
- Prefer not to answer
5. If you have not attended a community college and went straight to a 4-year university, do you
feel that your learning experience has been adequate?
- Yes
- No
- I wish I would have attended a community college first
- I am thinking about switching to another 4-year university
- I did not attend a 4-year university
- Prefer not to answer
6. What do you believe to be the main cause of the achievement gap?
- Financial reasons
- Inequality of learning
- Process of getting into college i.e. transfer student transition process, test scores, etc.
- Gender and ethnicity
- Other
7. If you answered other to the question above, could you please explain below
 Our inquiry team was able to gather 139 responses from people in many different
backgrounds. The questions allowed us to acquire a better understanding of our community
related to their choices in higher education. Even though the majority of our respondents
identified as white/caucasian, most of the other question responses were more split. Also, in the
question, What do you believe to be the main cause of the achievement gap? a very small
percentage answered with gender and ethnicity. To fully see if more people feel that gender
and ethnicity is a big issue, we would need to widen our outreach, to reach a more diverse
audience. It would have also been helpful to gather the percentages of genders of our
respondents to have as a comparison. Still addressing the above question, some respondents
even answered other as we made it one of the choices. After answering, the respondents were
to explain why they did so. It was interesting to see the wide array of reasons that people
thought to be the cause of the achievement gap. As said by a respondent above, you cant
narrow down the cause of this gap to one cause, it is a variety of causes.
Even so, majority of the respondents believe that finances play a main role in the
achievement gap. This could mean that many people feel that their financial status puts them at
a disadvantage when it comes to making a decision for higher education. This is a problem as
young people are not able to choose which school they want to attend. They may want to attend
a school where they feel they would be most successful but are not able to because of financial
reasons. This speaks largely to only one issue that leads to the achievement gap.
Out of the total number of responses, a higher percentage chose to go straight to a
4-year university as opposed to starting off at a community college. But it was interesting to see
that some who went straight to a four-year university wished they wouldve just went to a
community college instead. This could also be due to financial reasons as stated in the above
paragraph. Students could possibly be finding that the cost of attending a four-year university is
putting them in too much debt and attending a community college would put them in a better
financial situation. Students could also just as easily be homesick amongst other issues. We
could have possibly added a place where respondents could explain why they should have
attended a community college first to better understand possible issues leading to the
achievement gap.
Overall, our survey provided a lot of information on how college students feel about the
achievement gap. Our group was able to see how these students felt about the adequacy of
their education, what they thought led to the achievement gap, how the students primarily paid
for college, amongst other topics. Our primary research was a success in finding more possible
causes leading to the achievement gap.