Bottom Line

An exciting report that was released on Thursday, January 17 and was featured in The Boston Globe and on WBUR. According to the report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern and commissioned by the Boston Foundation, the 6-year college graduation rate for Boston Public School graduates increased from 40% to 47% between the high school graduating classes of 2000 and 2005. In addition, college enrollment and persistence rates have increased steadily since 2000.

When Bottom Line was founded in 1997 here in Boston, it was because we could see that students lacked the support, guidance and preparation to succeed in college. In the 16 years since then, we have been dedicated to changing the outcomes for those students, and we have been joined in our efforts more recently by many others in the community who have also recognized this significant challenge. This report acknowledges that we have made real progress in preparing and supporting our students so they can be successful in college and beyond. From the class of 2005, nearly 7% of all BPS degree earners received Bottom Line’s support throughout college. Our guidance played a critical role in the success of those students.

However, for our organization and for the community as a whole, our work isn’t done.

 Even with this progress, more than half of college-enrolled BPS graduates still were unable to earn a degree in 6 years. However, we have continued to grow every year since 2005, and we will continue to expand so that we can make a real, significant impact on our students and the community moving forward. The size of our class has tripled between 2005 and 2012, and, within the next two years, we will grow to serve 450 Boston Public School graduates from each high school class year, in addition to students from the Greater Boston and Worcester areas. With this growth, we hope to play an even larger role in the progress of our students and our community moving forward.

Mike Wasserman

Executive Director – MA

It is hard to believe that 2012 has come and gone.  Time flies at Bottom Line, especially at the end of the year when high school students are scrambling to send off their college applications and colleges students are wrapping up the fall semester and waiting anxiously for their grades.

I am pleased to say that in 2012, Bottom Line did our part to jumpstart the economy, adding 12 new full-time staff positions and producing 120 new college graduates. Some of the year’s other highlights include:

We launched our national support office and began to look at additional expansion opportunities.

Our New York office doubled in size from 4 to 8 staff and served more than 300 students in just our second year.

In September we kicked off a $5 million growth campaign in Boston and announced a $2.5 million dollar gift from the Grand Circle Foundation. Inside of 5 years, we expect to reach virtually every eligible high school and college student in Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury and provide them with Bottom Line’s one-on-one support.

We continued to refine our College Success program model and curriculum to ensure the highest level effectiveness and lead the national dialogue.

At Bottom Line, every year has been bigger and better than the last and we expect this to be true again in 2013.

• Our NY office will once again double in size – growing from 8 to 16 employees.
• We plan to open a second Boston location in Dorchester, MA to make it even more convenient for all Boston students who want access to our support.
• We expect at least 160 new college graduates by Summer 2013.

As the year winds down, with few exceptions, we see very little movement on the national scene that would make our work unnecessary.  While there is constant rhetoric about making college accessible and affordable and ensuring more students graduate, the systems that surround higher education are very slow to change.  College costs continue to rise, student to counselor ratios remain ridiculously high and colleges rarely recognize that that the bureaucracies they have in place don’t yet serve the first-generation, low-income students who they enroll.

So Bottom Line must grow- we must continue to be available to serve the students who need us, and we must spread the word that there is another way.  High-quality, relationship-based advising can steer disadvantaged students towards the finish line and help build their impoverished communities that are so desperate for our help.

– Greg Johnson

CEO, Bottom Line

Here in New York, our counselors have the opportunity of working with both our high students in our College Access Program and our college students in the College Success Program.  December is a stressful time for all of our students, and as counselors, we are charged with helping them see that their hard work will help achieve an end goal – whether that is submitting their college applications or excelling on finals.

Many of our college students are nervous and stressed out about final exams, unsure of exactly what to expect and eager to end the semester on a positive note. After Thanksgiving we have ventured to all our campuses to meet our students for “Finals Prep,” where we gather information about upcoming finals and create a study plan unique to each class. Ideally, our students leave these meetings knowing exactly what stands between them and the end of the semester, and have a detailed calendar and plan on how to excel on their exams. Because of Hurricane Sandy’s visit, these meetings are especially crucial since our students must seek out information about finals that have changed due to their impromptu week off from school.

Meanwhile, as we are prepping our college students for their finals, we are also helping our high school students submit all of their college applications! These “Packaging” meetings are an exciting and stressful time for our students. We reassure them that they will get into college and their essays are perfect. Coaching students to press the “submit” button is often a process that requires patience and encouragement – clicking that one button changes each student’s life trajectory. The smile on our students’ faces as they hang up their star on the “I Hit Submit” wall is worth every second of essay editing or common app review. Some of our students are already receiving acceptance letters. These letters are confirmation that their hard work was worth it and bring further excitement that their dreams of being the first in their family to attend college are becoming a reality.

Visiting our college students on campus gives the counselors in NY an inside perspective on many of the colleges on our high school students’ lists. This information helps us provide our access students with more detail about the student experience at each school, and ultimately informs where we encourage students to apply and attend.

-Victoria Hulit

Bottom Line Counselor, New York

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

NY Program Director Ginette Saimprevil meets with a student

It’s been a very difficult few weeks in New York City.  As you know, New York was hit by Hurricane Sandy on October 30^th, devestating  many parts of our area.  Thankfully, here at Bottom Line we were relatively unharmed – our building did not lose heat or power in the storm.  Our hearts go out to our students, friends, family and others across the City who have suffered enormous losses from the storm.

The Bottom Line New York office closed for a couple of days immediately before and after the storm, but by Wednesday of that week, the counselors who could make it to the office – whether by foot, bike or bus – were there, calling and meeting with as many students as possible.  Our staff missed seven college visits during the week of the storm.  Some were made up through phone check-ins, and many were rescheduled for the following week.  We also missed over 30 Access meetings.  All of these meetings were rescheduled within a week of being missed – counselors worked extra days over the weekend, and our Program Director stepped in to pick up almost a full week’s worth of meetings.

We were able to make contact with all of our students and, thankfully, most were fine. However, a few of our students were greatly affected by the storm, and we are working to get them the help they need.  One thing we’re doing immediately is a professional clothing drive for students and families who lost belongings.   Although many subways, bridges and tunnels were closed for over a week after the hurricane, the Bottom Line office has been packed with students, and counselors have been coming in early and staying late into the evening to help students complete their college applications and stay on track with their school work.  We never cease to be amazed by our students who, no matter the obstacle, continue to stay focused on their goals.

Things are finally feeling almost back to normal for most people in NY, although a few communities continue to struggle without heat or power.  We are grateful for our relative good fortune and so proud of the way our team pulled together.

– Ruth Genn

Executive Director, NY

By the first week of November, I have packaged – Bottom Line lingo for submitting college applications with our students – seven students on my caseload of sixty-two. This is a huge step in the life of each Bottom Line student for a variety of reasons. Our students are often the first in their family to apply to college and, in many instances, are the first in their families to be on track to graduate from high school.

Packaging meetings last at least two hours; however, since Halloween candy appeared in the office, they have been running a little longer. Being the dork that I am, I started calling them “Snackaging” meetings; mostly to satisfy my own desire to sneak puns into my meetings, but also to break the ice and calm my students through the intense experience of actually hitting submit. After their college essays are checked twice (just like Santa’s list), and their Common Application and other applications are filled out – “I’s dotted and T’s crossed” – they sit down, fingers hovering over the mouse for a second, and, in one tiny movement, change the trajectory of the their prescripted lives. After submitting, our work here at Bottom Line is nowhere near done. We spend the last few minutes of these meetings creating checklists for follow-up and broaching the subject of financial aid – another application process we assist students with beginning in January.

Before our students head home, out into the wintry air, perhaps traveling over an hour on public transportation to get home – magic happens. In advance of their meeting, a yellow star is made with the name of said student printed in bold lettering. After a student has clicked submit, they place their stars on a wall in the office under the statement “I Hit Submit!” When a student makes a move towards the wall, star in head, whispers begin to fly around the office.  Heads turn and both counselors and students stop their work to clap as the student proudly places the star on the wall. “I have applied,” they silently declare, one giant leap towards something more.

As Bottom Line starts its new school year, we have a larger staff that is larger than ever! Here in Boston we have hired 11 new full-time members of the program staff, allowing us to expand our Success and Career programs while continuing to serve our 500 high school seniors. Bottom Line carried out an intensive 8-week training process this summer to prepare new staff to help our students overcome challenges getting into college, staying on track to graduate, and finding a job upon graduation.

 Throughout this time, new staff got overviews on programs and history specific to Bottom Line as well as background information on student demographics, the high schools and colleges that we work with and much more. New counselors also get trained to meet with their students by watching meetings conducted by experienced counselors, by doing “mock meetings” amongst each other, by conducting their own student meetings with assistance from an experienced counselor and then by holding meetings with their students they felt prepared enough to do so. We call this the “apprenticeship model” and while it takes a long time, it is very thorough.  As a result our staff is fully prepared to help our students overcome any challenges or issues that arise.

 As a busy season full of visiting college campuses, filling out common applications and writing essays kicks into gear, our new staff is enthusiastic and ready to take on all the challenges that come their way! For me, this is the best time of year because I can see all the hard work done over the summer leads to strong results we are able to achieve with our students.

– Miriam Rubin

Dear Friends and Supporters of Bottom Line,

For Class of 2012 high school seniors, the past month has been full of college decisions. After months of hard work and waiting, students finally get to survey their options and choose a college that suits them. At Bottom Line, we spend a lot of time talking about “finding a fit” – meaning a college that meets a student’s academic, financial, career, and personal needs. Affordability is an integral part of this discussion. By enrolling in a college that meets their financial needs, a student can complete a degree without accumulating an excessive amount of debt. In many cases, Bottom Line advises students to enroll in full-need schools, such as College of the Holy Cross and Tufts University, or state schools, such as UMass Boston and Worcester State University, which have a low cost of attendance.

Ariana Campos of University Park Campus School in Worcester (below) is just one student who, we are proud to say, has found her fit! After getting accepted to all 9 of the schools she applied to, and after looking over her award letters with Bottom Line, she was glad to find out that she can graduate debt-free from Harvard University. We are excited to help all 785 seniors from Massachusetts and New York choose a school in the coming weeks.

College application submission season is a very exciting time!  For the past several weeks, I have been proofreading  college applications at Bottom Line to make sure that they are ready to be sent. I’d like to share with you some of the mistakes I have caught, so you can avoid them too.

1. There are a few places on the Common App where the applicant has to type in an answer rather than select one in a menu. It is very easy to make mistakes in these places.  Look out for spelling and capitalization errors in sections such as your Parent’s Position/Title and Name of Employer as well as your Current Year Courses.
2. The Activities section is required, whether or not you plan to attach a resume.  It is intended to highlight the activities that are most important to you, including the year, season, duration, and position in which you participated.  Read each of your answers carefully to make sure that they accurately reflect your involvement. Then, craft a resume-like description of the activity.  Again, be sure to proofread your response before hitting submit!
3. I could write an entire blog about the college essay, but one widespread mistake to avoid is using the word like where such as or for example is grammatically correct. (e.g. I enjoy playing sports, such as basketball.)
4. Finally, after you ask two teachers to write recommendations for you, be sure to go into the School Forms section and invite them to your list of Recommenders.

Good luck!
Katrina