As a result of the COVID-19COVID-19 pandemic, schools across the United States (U.S.) closed their doors in spring 2020, disrupting the learning environments of a generation of students. Student experiences during this turbulent time varied greatly, with disparities in accessAccess to effective instruction largely dependent on socioeconomic status. We report on findings from a nationally representative youth survey conducted in spring 2020. The survey asked students about how COVID-19COVID-19 impacted their access to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) content, their learning, and goals for the future. Survey results illustrate ongoing themes inEducation education—traditionally marginalized students had far less productive remote learningRemote learning experiences than their higher-resourced peers. In other words, the pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities in student accessAccess to effective high school instruction and, by extension, accessAccess to the STEM pipeline. We turn to social capital theory and Bourdieu’s concept of hysteresis to consider the contextual factors that shaped students’ STEM-related experiences during COVID. We assert that social capital played a central role in whether and how accessAccess to learning tools were taken up and encourage educators to consider the full range of factors (e.g., students’ sense of self efficacy, accessAccess to adults who facilitate online learning) that shape students’ progress along their STEM trajectories.