In Senior Year at Topeka High in the New York Times, Anemona Hartocollis talks to 12th graders, their parents and their counselors at her old high school. Nearly all students want to go to college, but some never enroll and many who do never earn a degree, she writes. It’s called the “aspirations-attainment gap.”

“Applying to college requires a huge amount of social capital — the support of family, friends, mentors and teachers — as well as personal drive and initiative,” she writes.

Topeka High is in many ways an all-American school, the largest public high school in this sprawling low-rise city of about 127,000 people. The school has a strong racial, ethnic and economic mix among its 1,800 students.

. . . A handful of students, mainly affluent ones, will go to the Ivy League. But the graduation rate hovers in the low 70 percent range, the principal said; 45 percent of graduates go to a four-year college, and 17 percent go to a two-year college.

She talks to a boy who’s taking honors classes, but considering technical school as well as college. His farmer dad wants him to enlist in the military or work before starting college. His mother favors college, but doesn’t know how the application process works.

Another boy, a frequent truant from a “downwardly mobile” family, wants to be a musician. Can he do better than his dropout brother?

An ambitious black girl wants to be a doctor. She’s done everything right in high school, but can she get the counseling and financial aid she’ll need to make her dream a reality?