The increasing prevalence of private tutoring has received minimal scholarly attention in the United States. We use over 25 years of geocoded data on the universe of U.S. private tutoring centers to estimate the size and growth of this industry and to identify predictors of tutoring center locations. We document four important facts. First, from 1997 to 2022, the number of centers more than tripled, from about 3,000 to 10,000, with steady growth through 2015 before a more recent plateau. Second, the location and growth of private tutoring is heavily concentrated in areas with high income and parental education. More than half of tutoring centers are in areas in the top quintile of income. Third, even conditional on income and parental education, private tutoring centers tend to locate in areas with many Asian American families, suggesting differences in demand by ethnic or cultural identity. Fourth, we see only marginal evidence that the private tutoring market tracks K-12 school markets, i.e. charter, magnet, or private school options. The rapid rise in high-income families' demand for this form of private educational investment mimics phenomena observed in other spheres of education and family life, with potentially important implications for inequality in student outcomes.

The impact of admissions process design on the racial diversity of schools and colleges has sparked heated debates. We study the pipeline into Boston's three public exam schools to understand racial gaps in enrollment. Admission to these schools has historically been based on a combination of grade point average (GPA) and a score on an optional test from a private developer. We document racial gaps in test-taking rates, test scores, GPAs, preferences for the most selective school, and ultimate admission rates to all three schools. These gaps persist even among students with similarly high baseline achievement as measured by the state's mandatory standardized test. Substantial numbers of high-achieving Black and Hispanic students do not apply to the exam schools and to the most selective school in particular. The choice of standardized test used to measure academic merit strongly affects who is admitted.

Though counseling is one commonly pursued intervention to improve college enrollment and completion for disadvantaged students, there is relatively little causal evidence on its efficacy. We use a regression discontinuity design to study the impact of intensive college counseling provided by a Massachusetts program to college-seeking, low-income students that admits applicants partly on the basis of a minimum grade point average requirement. Counseling shifts enrollment toward four-year colleges that are less expensive and have higher graduation rates than alternatives students would otherwise choose. Counseling also improves persistence through at least the second year of college, suggesting a potential to increase the degree completion rates of disadvantaged students.

Low college enrollment rates among low-income students may stem from a combination of credit constraints, low academic skill, and low-quality schools. Recent Massachusetts data allow the first use of school district fixed effects in the analysis of credit constraints, leading to four findings. First, low-income students in Massachusetts have lower intended college enrollment rates than higher income students but also have dramatically lower skills and attend lower-quality school districts. Second, inclusion of skill controls greatly reduces but does not eliminate this intended enrollment gap. Third, inclusion of school district fixed effects has little further impact, with low-income students eight percentage points less likely to intend enrollment than higher income students of the same skill and from the same school district. Fourth, medium- and high-skilled low-income students appear the most constrained. State governments could use the methods employed here to target financial aid more efficiently.