Descriptive statistics:
– Students of color were more heavily represented among high school summer program participants, relative to their counterparts in the control group.
– There was no statistically significant difference in parents with four-year college degrees between participants and nonparticipants.
– Students who participated in a high school STEM summer program were significantly more likely to have STEM tutoring, compared with nonparticipants.
– On average, summer program participants reported significantly higher SAT mathematics scores and took more mathematics courses than nonparticipants.
– Students who participated in a high school STEM summer program were more likely to have STEM career aspirations at both the beginning and end of high school.
Logistic Regressions:
– Students who reported STEM career aspirations at the beginning of high school had much greater odds of reporting STEM aspirations at the end of high school relative to their peers who did not.
– Males had 2.2 times greater odds of reporting end of high school STEM career aspirations relative to their female counterparts.
– The number of mathematics courses a student completed in high school was also a significant predictor of end of high school STEM career aspirations. A one course increase was associated with 1.2 times greater odds of reporting end of high school STEM career aspirations.
– Students’ SAT math scores were also statistically significant. A 100 point increase in SAT mathematics score was associated with a 26% increase in the odds of reporting end of high school STEM career aspirations.
– Students who participated in a high school STEM summer program had 1.4 times the odds of indicating end of high school STEM career aspirations relative to those who did not participate in a summer program
– Students who participated in a high school summer program that showed them the real-life relevance of STEM had odds that were 1.8 times those of students who did not participate in a program.
– Students who indicated that they participated in a summer program that did not show them the real-life relevance of STEM were statistically no different from students who did not participate in a program at all in terms of their end of high school STEM aspirations.
– There were no statistically significant interaction terms.