The Roosevelt Institution
In the fall of 2006, the Education Center tackled a project on college outreach and advising programs for high school seniors. The Yale Admissions Office requested the Center's help in evaluating its Student Ambassadors program, which sends Yale students to lower-income high schools to conduct information sessions about Yale, and in the process the Center conducted research on both the problem of socio-economic diversity in higher education and various programs designed to address the problem from around the country.
The relative lack of socio-economic diversity in higher education is a serious problem confronting our generation. According to researchers Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, 74% of students at the top 146 colleges and universities come from the top income quartile, while only 10% come from the bottom half of the income bracket, and only 3% come from the lowest income quartile. Such inequity has dramatic effects later on, contributing to a massive wage gap and perpetuating cycles of poverty and social immobility.
Although many factors contribute to the lack of socio-economic diversity in higher education, one of the most dramatic and straightforward is the simple lack of information available to many lower-income high school students about how to make a college education a reality. One study found that in low-income high schools, only 37% of seniors took a college entrance exam, like the SAT or ACT, while in middle-income high schools, 64% of students took a similar exam. This indicates that many qualified, talented students are not applying to college at all.
Outreach and advising programs are designed to correct this "information gap." Many colleges and universities run programs to reach out to high school students and encourage them to consider applying to their school. A few others include an advising component in the program, guiding the students through the application process in general. For example, the Telementoring program at Amherst College (MA) pairs Amherst students with high school seniors, who consult with their "telementors" about their college options via phone and email. Although the program is still quite new and small, anecdotal reports indicate that it has been highly successful. The University of Virginia runs a program called College Guides, which places recent graduates in low-income high schools to work as college counselors. College Summit and Questbridge are non-profits that seek to educate high schoolers about the college process through summer workshops, school curricula, and professional advice. Questbridge is targeted toward a small group of highly qualified, low-income students, while College Summit works with entire school districts to create a broad college-going culture in an area.
The Yale Admissions Office asked the Center on Education to research and evaluate these programs, as well as Yale's Student Ambassadors outreach program, and make recommendations about how to improve the Student Ambassadors program. In January 2007, the Center on Education presented its findings, including its recommendation that the Student Ambassadors program expand to include an advising component, similar to the Telementoring program, in which Student Ambassadors would keep in contact with students they meet through their informational sessions and advise those students on the college process in general. The Yale Admissions Office is currently considering that recommendation. We are also happy to report that Yale has since become a partner college with both Questbride and College Summit, and that the first College Summit workshop was hosted on Yale's campus this past summer.
The Center's report, "Increasing Socio-Economic Diversity in Higher Education Through Outreach and Advising," was presented in July 2007 at the Roosevelt Institution's National Policy Expo in Washington, DC.
Related Materials and Links:
Full Policy Report on Outreach & Advising Programs: July 2007
Power Point from the Roosevelt National Policy Expo: July 2007
Published 25 Ideas Piece: July 2007
Group members:
Sam Brill
Abby McCartney