Education Policy, Business and Technology

Champion for Low-Income Students Gets a Boost Itself

Inside Higher Ed: For more than a decade, the College Advising Corps has steadily built a network of nearly 650 dedicated college counselors in high schools that serve large numbers of low-income and first-generation students in 14 states. In many of those schools, the ratio of students to college counselors is worse than the national average of 482:1, and the advising corps's troops are designed to ensure that students in the schools not only consider going to college but "are matched to and ultimately get through a place that get them a credential," says Nicole Hurd, the group's founder and chief executive officer.

The program has been proven (through research by scholars at Stanford University) to significantly increase the rate at which students in the schools take standardized tests (13 percent), apply for federal financial aid (27 percent), apply to multiple colleges (24 percent) -- and ultimately, get accepted by a college that suits them (24 percent). The group estimates that its work has helped about 300,000 more low-income, first-generation and other underrepresented students enroll in the "whole vast array" of colleges since 2005 than would have otherwise.

Read article