Shahidul Islam

This paper examines the experiences of college students who are the sole representatives of their race, ethnicity, or nationality in a classroom setting, a situation referred to as being "alone." Assuming that the US Supreme Court ban on Affirmative Action in college admission will reduce representations of underrepresented minority students in selective college campuses, I explore whether being the only student of a particular background in a course section has a causal effect on the academic outcomes of undergraduate students. To answer this, I exploit the random course and section assignment based on freshman students' course preferences at a large public college in the USA. I use actual course assignment data to define an instrument for the treatment of being alone. Conditional student's course preferences, the instrument (i.e., being assigned alone) is as good as random.  The findings show that being the only student in a class by race or ethnicity impacts students' course grades negatively. Being alone in a class by students' racial, ethnic, or national attributes and academic attributes impacts course grades negatively. Being alone in a course by race or ethnicity and college reduces the course grade by  0.054 points for domestic students. Being alone by race or ethnicity and college in the same instructor-taught sections of the course reduces the course grade by 0.076 points for domestic students and 0.30 points for international students.  The empirical mechanism reveals that the negative alone effects are driven by positive peer effects. Non-linearity in peer effects and comparison of alone effect with the average peer effect implies that a part of the alone effect can be explained as the loneliness effect.