Does intensive advising really have a meaningful impact on students’ college access and retention? A report in an ongoing study of a program called Bottom Line, released this month by the University of Virginia and Texas A&M University, says yes.
Bottom Line provides one-on-one college advising for 7,000 mostly poor and first-generation college-going students in Boston, Chicago, New York City, and Worchester, Mass., beginning the summer before 12th grade and continuing up to six years after graduation.
Students who participated in the program during the study were 7 percentage points more likely to enroll in college (90 percent) than students who did not participate (83 percent). Moreover, students in Bottom Line were 10 percentage points more likely to remain in a four-year college for the first three semesters and 14 percentage points more likely to be enrolled in the second year after high school graduation.
