Since the day that Bottom Line began supporting students it was obvious that just working with them through the college application process wasn’t good enough.  The at-risk students we help “get in” are far too likely to drop out of college before completing a degree. Consequently, we built our programming model to remain connected and supportive until our students graduate from college. Until now, it wasn’t clear how big of an impact our program was having.  A study released by Harvard Doctoral candidate, Kolajo Afolabi, has been able to take a comparative look at our work and the results are impressive. According to the study, students in Bottom Line’s College Success program are up to 43% more likely to graduate from college than their peers.

In 2002 Bottom Line made a few changes that set the stage for this study.  That year marks the moment that the demand for our access program had grown too large for us to support every high school senior in our College Success program. It was then that our Success program began to evolve to supporting students at what we call “Target Schools”.  These are the schools where the majority of our students attend.  They are the schools that tend to be more affordable than others – often public colleges and universities and all in Massachusetts.  This change created a unique ability to measure the graduation rates of the students who went on to our Target colleges vs. those who decided to attend another school.  The populations we are comparing, while not exactly the same, have much in common.  Furthermore we were able to control for variables including ethnicity, high school academic performance and type of college attended.

While I am not surprised that the students who joined our College Success program have done better, I am impressed at the size of the disparity between the groups. Students who remain in our program are up to 43% more likely to complete a college degree than those who receive our college access support and then do not join our college program.

Kolajo’s work will help demonstrate to others why it is so important to think of the college application process as a beginning and not the end.  Coupling his research with our day to day work reinforces our belief that “getting in is not good enough.”  Please read the full study or the executive summary, and let us know what you think.

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Notes From the Field

Greetings from UMass Amherst!

It’s 5:30 pm, and after meeting with 34 students, the UMass Amherst crew is still going strong. We will meet with 9 more students this evening and 25 more students tomorrow before heading back to Boston in the afternoon. Total students helped: 78.

We have more Success students at UMass Amherst than any other college, which is challenging because the campus is 2 ½ hours away. Organizing these campus visits is quite a production: for this visit, eight counselors are at UMass for two days. We left Boston at 9:00 am this morning, and won’t get back until almost 6:00 pm tomorrow. These visits are long, but they’re also fun: last visit, we hosted a campus social (with pizza!) for students in the evening, and this visit, counselors are already plotting post-meeting dinner plans. These two day expeditions occur four or five times per semester.

It’s midterm season at UMass, so we’re focusing on academics with all first years and sophomores. We’re also meeting with other students to discuss study skills, start job planning, and solve bill issues. Overall, students seem stressed but happy: the biggest complaint from first years so far is the amount of walking required to traverse the huge campus.

I’ve met with three students today. My first student, Jenea, is a sophomore and just transferred from MCLA. I was her counselor last year, too, and I helped her complete the transfer process.  Although we’ve checked in over the phone, this was my first time seeing her on campus since she started at UMass, so it was great to hear that she’s doing so well.  She’s majoring in Theater, likes her classes, and already has a lot of friends on campus. She’s been doing well in all of her classes except one, so we looked up the professor’s office hours, and I showed her where tutoring is on campus. I also met with two seniors who are starting the job search process; one student is looking for environmental or government jobs, and the other wants to work as a parole officer. I’m excited to see where they end up after graduation.

That’s all from UMass; check back soon for more updates!

Jen Bees

Success Coordinator

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Getting Through

Welcome to Bottom Line’s Blog, Getting Through!

As part of our newly designed website and as a unique place on the vast internet our blog will contribute to the dialogue surrounding the issues of College Access and College Success.

As one of the first community based organizations to make college student retention the focus of our work we are pleased to have this venue to share our thoughts and learnings about what it takes to help students get to and through college.  We expect that in this space, we will hear from our students, program staff and our management team as a way to foster an ongoing dialogue and to share what works in college retention.

Over the last decade and especially in the last couple years the conversation about “Getting Through” college has made it in to the mainstream.  This is a big change from the days when even our biggest supporters didn’t understand why we were spending so much time supporting college students.  However, the dialogue about keeping students in college, has raised some interesting questions that we explore everyday in our work and will share in this space. We anticipate discussing topics including: Which students are most in need of support? Where does the responsibility lie with helping students stay enrolled in college- with the high schools, colleges or somewhere in between? Can college retention support really be done from a community based organization?  What are the stories beneath the surface when students drop out of college?

We hope that you will learn with us as we address those questions and offer a laboratory of what works in college retention.  Again, welcome to our new blog and please return often.

Greg Johnson
Executive Director

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