A Case Study in Lifting College Attendance
NEW YORK TIMES: …Around the same time that [Sydney Nye] was turning her attention to college applications, Delaware’s governor, Jack Markell, announced a program called Getting to Zero. Its goal was to get all high-school seniors with an SAT score of at least a 1,500 (out of 2,400) on the SAT to enroll in college. In recent years, state data show, about 20 percent of such teenagers did not.
State officials started the program last fall by working with the College Board to mail informational packets to all 1,800 high-school seniors deemed college-ready. In the packets, low-income students received application fee waivers to eight colleges, and students with the best test scores were encouraged to apply to top colleges. High-school guidance counselors and state officials then followed up with students and their parents — through evening phone calls and in-person meetings — to make sure the thorny logistics of college applications didn’t deter them…
Ms. Nye is among them. She will be attending Stanford University, where the admissions rate — as she told me with a sheepish laugh, after I’d asked — was 5.07 percent this year. “Give or take a little bit,” she added… (more)
