Marissa Thompson is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and Education at Stanford University. Her work focuses on the causes and consequences of racial and socioeconomic inequality, with an emphasis on understanding the role of education in producing disparate outcomes over the life-course. Marissa’s current research explores the Black gender gap in educational attainment, parental choice of segregated schools, and the causal effects of school district secession. She employs both descriptive and quasi-experimental quantitative methods using secondary data (such as longitudinal studies and large administrative databases) as well as novel primary data (such as nationally-representative survey experiments). Marissa’s work has been funded by the Institute of Education Sciences and the Stanford Graduate Fellowship in Science and Engineering. Prior to her doctoral studies, she earned a B.S.E. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
