Just outside New York City, school counselors at Hunterdon Central Regional High School (New Jersey) were at lunch discussing the students who would graduate from their sprawling suburban school in spring 2017. Their thoughts echoed those from a variety of people who have worked with these seniors. The 2017 graduates are confident, but need…

Base Pair is an ongoing (1992-present) collaboration between University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) faculty mentors and Mississippi high school students and teachers. UMMC faculty and Base Pair teachers designed a course which has allowed curriculum innovations by teachers. The student component engages 15 trainees annually in laboratory…

Applying for financial aid can be a complicated, time-consuming endeavor for students and their families. Fortunately, many state aid programs have taken strides to align aid applications to the form used for federal aid programs, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), making state aid more readily accessible. New conversations…

It was a blustery, chilly January morning in 2009. Washington, D.C., was teeming with visitors, who had gathered in throngs on the Mall the day before to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. Dan Leeds, of the philanthropic Leeds family, had invited two dozen high-ranking officers from foundations…

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)--which students must complete to qualify for most federal, state, and institutional financial aid--is a gateway to college through which many students must pass, particularly those from low- to moderate-income households (King, 2004; Kofoed, 2013). Yet given the complexity of the…

In the United States there are significant gaps in college-going between high-income and low-income students and between White students and African American and Latino/a students. A number of factors contribute to this persistent gap. Among these factors are the rising cost of college attendance and the complexity of the financial aid process. The…

The persistently low college attainment rates of youth from poor families are partly attributable to their uncertainty about college affordability. The current federal financial aid system does not provide specific information about college costs until just before college enrollment and the information is only available to students completing a…

Every student, who meets some basic eligibility requirements, can get some type of financial aid regardless of age or family income. Federal student aid is a financial aid from the federal government to help a student pay for education expenses at an eligible college, technical school, vocational school, or graduate school. There are three…

The high-school seniors drifting in and out of the office in New York should be weighing financial-aid offers and deciding where to go to college. But some of them have yet to begin the process of applying for student aid. This article describes a nonprofit group in Harlem which gives last-minute help to students uncertain about applying for…

Growing concerns about low awareness and take-up rates for government support programs like financial aid for college have recently spurred calls to simplify the application process and enhance visibility. However, little research has been done to determine whether such reforms would truly improve college access and in what form…

The primary research question for this project was whether a streamlined, relatively inexpensive, counseling-based program that assists low-income high school students with the college and financial application processes can significantly increase college enrollment rates. The intervention was designed to test the hypothesis that lack of…

Rather than promote access, college admissions and financial aid processes often create a series of barriers that the poorest student must overcome to get to college. The Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis (CHEPA) of the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California directed a three-year research initiative,…