years, the year in which 16 years of completed schooling is first reported was determined
and this year was designated as the year of graduation.9 Those who were enrolled in
college in 1990 (with less than 16 years of completed education) were treated as right-
censored .
After imposing the sample selection criteria described above, the final sample is
composed of 4,944 students who are high school graduates. Among them, 2943
individuals have entered college by Fall 1990. The empirical conditional probabilities
(hazard) for two-year and four- year enrollment by years since high school graduation are
presented in Figure 1. As can be seen from this figure, the majority of those who enter
two- or four-year institutions, do so immediately after graduating high school. Among
those enrolling immediately after graduating high school, the majority enter four-year
institutions while among those who delay enrollment by at least one-year, the majority
enter two-year institutions. Additional descriptive statistics and definitions of predictor
variables are reported in Table 1.
9The exact year of college graduation is reported for some students. This information is used for confirming
the created year of college graduation.
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