Bottom Line prides itself on being proactive about the services that we provide to our students. Our goal is to empower staff at Bottom Line to think critically about our services using the data we collect during the school year. We want to ensure we are supporting our students in the best possible way. This past spring, Worcester College Access Program Manager Michelle Easton took a closer look at our students’ financial aid data. Michelle was curious to see how the decisions a high school senior makes regarding financial aid impacts their likelihood of graduating from college. The result is our first Annual Interesting Report (AIR for short).
An excerpt from our first Annual Interesting Report:
“Financial aid can make or break a college education. Despite having the best grades and work ethic, a student who is unable to pay for college will be unable to continue their education. This seems so obvious, and yet many of the students we work with at Bottom Line struggle to fund their education. Many of our students and their families try their hardest to make college a reality, but are often unable to sustain such great expenses year after year. In order to best advise our high school students in their final college choices, I wanted to dig deeper and fully understand how financial aid impacts our students. In the spring of 2012, I sifted through our data to analyze over 130 students’ financial aid outcomes, and confirmed that financial hardship had a significant, negative impact on college graduation rates.”
The complete report is available here: 2012 Winter AIR – What Effect Does Financial Aid Have on College Graduation Rates
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