Editorial Note:
This blog feature was created by the Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD) Media Editor, Stephanie Wilson, in celebration of the third place winner in AKD’s 2026 graduate student paper competition, Thalia Tom.
Each year AKD sponsors a graduate student paper competition. Winners are eligible to win cash prizes and travel money to attend the American Sociological Association annual conference. The third place winner received $100 and up to $1,000 in travel expenses to the 2024 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
Continue reading to learn more Thalia Tom‘s winning paper!
Meet Thalia Tom, PhD
Thalia Tom earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of Southern California in the Spring of 2026 and she will be joining Stanford University as a Postdoctoral Researcher as she moves into the next phase of her career. Thalia describes herself as a “sociologist using quantitative methods to examine neighborhood stratification and educational inequality” and her paper “Examining Links Between Neighborhood Disadvantage and School Readiness” earned her a 3rd place prize in the 2026 AKD graduate student paper competition.
To learn more about Thalia and her research, we reached out for a brief interview. Continue reading below to learn more about Thalia, her research, and her future goals as a sociologist! You can also connect with Thalia on LinkedIn.
Can you briefly summarize your award-winning paper?
In this paper, I link restricted-use data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Kindergarten Class to the public-use American Community Survey and draw on causal inference techniques to investigate the relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and children’s school readiness.
Overall, I find that living in a more disadvantaged neighborhood predicts significantly lower math and reading performance in the fall of kindergarten, with some evidence of nonlinearity at higher levels of disadvantage. These results demonstrate that neighborhood disadvantage may harm educational outcomes earlier in the life course than previously appreciated, with implications for when and where interventions to address educational inequality may be the most effective.
What motivated you to write on the topic of your paper?
A common thread throughout my research has been the role of place in creating and sustaining inequality. As I continued to engage with the research on neighborhood effects, it struck me that the literature largely focused on how neighborhood socioeconomic context shaped educational attainment outcomes, such as high school and college graduation. While these are certainly educational milestones worthy of study, inequalities often compound over time, so I couldn’t help but wonder if we were missing an important part of the story by not examining neighborhood effects on educational outcomes that occur earlier in the life course.
If you had to choose one major takeaway to share from your paper, what would that be?
Exposure to contextual disadvantage shapes early educational outcomes in ways that set the stage for future stratification, rendering early childhood a consequential developmental stage that merits greater attention in the literature on neighborhood effects and educational inequality.
How do you see yourself using sociology in your future career after earning your graduate degree?
After earning my Ph.D., I will join Stanford University as an Equity in Early Education Postdoctoral Fellow. In this role, I will continue to draw on the theoretical perspectives and methodological tools afforded by sociological training to better understand the causes and consequences of inequality in early childhood. Whereas my research to this point has employed quantitative methods to study stratification from afar, I am looking forward to incorporating a sociological lens into more applied work with community organizations and research-practice partnerships aimed at increasing educational opportunities for children from diverse backgrounds.
Lastly, how has being involved in AKD impacted your experience as a graduate student in the social sciences?
In 2016, the same year that I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in Sociology, I was inducted into Alpha Kappa Delta. In this sense, becoming a member of AKD marked the beginning of my journey as a graduate student in the social sciences, so receiving this award in the final year of my Ph.D. program is especially meaningful.
As a first-generation scholar, I have come to understand the importance of supportive intellectual communities for survival in academia. My chapter’s representatives have been wonderful stewards of AKD, and over the years I have benefited from attending AKD panels on networking and the job market.
I am grateful for the opportunities and support that AKD has provided throughout my time as a graduate student, and as I transition into the next phase of my career, I am eager to carry forward AKD’s guiding principle of academic excellence in the service of improving the human condition.