The American Psychological Association (APA) defines 

socioeconomic status as “the social

standing or class of an individual or group” (APA 2018). SES has been commonly used as a
latent construct for measuring family background (Bofah and Hannula 2017).  A family’s
Socioeconomic Status is typically categorized as either, high, middle, or low. Socioeconomic
status (SES) is a characterization derived from a “combination of education, income and
occupation” (APA).

Low SES students (often first-generation college students) can experience difficult transitions to
college, and when these students self-identify in “lower,” working-class strata, they can feel out
of place and court intentions of dropping out (Langout, et. al, 2009). Such students may have a
more limited repertoire of learning strategies available to them, and may approach studying
differently (Yee, 2016). Additionally, high- and low-SES students have been shown to have
achievement gaps in standardized testing due to stereotype threat, a phenomenon
when “members of a stigmatized group perform poorly on a task because they fear confirming
a negative stereotype that is associated with their ingroup” (Spencer and Castano, 2007).