The purpose of this article is to inquiry about cultural capital and life style(s) associations among university applicants to the public universities of Rio de Janeiro at 1990. The puzzle is which social spaces and cultural consumer practices should be found among these prospective students? The data analysis is based on the social and cultural questionnaire research applied to all the applicant students of the year 1990 (year of) in the following institutions: The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), The Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), The Federal Fluminense University (UFF), The State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and The National School of Statistical Sciences, of Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (ENCE/IBGE). In short, two major findings are detached. The first one is that correspondence analysis plots of literary consumer consumption, cultural practices and inequalities attributes are summarized in three major clusters. The first is applicants with strong cultural capital, however without the same level of economic resources. The second is students with low access to cultural goods, and the third and middle segment has an average among the two others segments. The second finding is the high level of inequality to cultural resources access, even to the prospective students who are able to apply to a university.
inequalities; higher education; cultural habits; consumer behavior; education
