A study was just released today that demonstrates a relatively simple, low-cost intervention that gets qualified low income students to apply to and attend the University of Michigan when they wouldn’t otherwise have done so.
In Michigan, all public school students must take the SAT. Moreover, there is a statewide database with information on all students, including whether they are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunch, and what their GPA is. The researchers identified all students who met an SAT and GPA cutoff, and who were eligible for free or reduced-cost lunch.
The researchers selected all the qualifying students in some high schools for the treatment. The rest of the qualifying students were the control. All students in the treatment group got a big glossy envelope that told them if they applied to and were admitted to Michigan, they would get a four-year full tuition& fees scholarship, without having to fill out FAFSA or CSS. (And they’d be eligible for even more aid if they did fill out the financial aid forms.) The students were given personalized login ids for Michigan’s admission portal. Their parents got letters too, and so did the principals in their schools.
Students who got the personalized letters were way more likely to apply to and be admitted to Michigan than the control group. Of the students who ended up at Michigan, by comparison to the control group the researchers determined that about a quarter wouldn’t have gone to any college, and three quarters would have gone to a community college or other four year school. Moreover, after two years, the students at Michigan showed good “persistence,” which is to say they didn’t drop out at high rates.
The effect was most pronounced among students in the Southwest of Michigan (the Grand Rapids area) and the Upper Peninsula, and less strong in the Detroit/Ann Arbor area where UMich is. The researchers theorize that local students are more likely to already know about applying to UMich.
The intervention is low-cost because the treatment students were already eligible for full tuition and fees; the personalized letters were telling them about something they were always entitled to.
Here’s a link to the study: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25349
Unfortunately that link is paywalled. A free link is floating around the web-- I found it on the Twitter feed of Prof Dynarski, one of the authors-- but it violates the terms of service of CC to post it here. I recommend having a look at the study itself.
There are all sorts of interesting tidbits in the study.
The entire group of eligible students in Michigan each year was about 2000 students, about 1200 young women and 800 young men.
A lot of research shows that women have less confidence than men in their skills and qualifications. Among the control group of students, women were a lot less likely than men to apply for admission to the University of Michigan, but slightly more likely to enroll if they were admitted. In the treatment group, many more students overall applied, and the percentage of female applicants was much closer to the percentage of male applicants. Young women seem to benefit from a personalized appeal that tells them they are good enough.
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=170976#finaid indicates that, for 2016-2017, only 16% of University of Michigan - Ann Arbor frosh had Pell grants. Even with the interventions described in the paper for students in 2015-2016, that still leaves University of Michigan - Ann Arbor as a state flagship with a relatively low percentage of students from lower half income backgrounds.
Presumably that’s what this intervention is designed to address: getting more lower income students to enroll at Michigan. The study was conducted with what seems to be enthusiastic cooperation from the University. The letter to parents begins:
and it’s signed by the Associate Vice President of the Office of Enrollment Management.
To ucbalumnus’ point, colleges like Michigan are somehow not doing a good job publicizing themselves to lower income students. Every single student in the group of qualifying students (low-income, high SAT & GPA) was eligible for the scholarship, even before the intervention. They could have applied to Michigan for free, had a good chance of admission, and gotten free tuition, free fees and maybe more if they were admitted. They were good candidates and Michigan wanted them to apply. But they did not know this. Or maybe they found the entire process mystifying, scary and opaque.
A lot of the qualifying students were the only ones in their school who qualified. There were no peers to help them, and I bet their high schools weren’t doing a good job either.
I think the median income at a lot of state flagships has been rising steadily for the last decade.
In some cases, it reflects the reality of tuition increases (or fees, in states where tuition gets capped but fees skyrocket.) So even kids who qualify for substantial aid, hear the ticket price and say “not for me”. In other cases, it’ the law of unintended consequences (of merit aid)- there was a study in Georgia I believed which showed the impact of the Zell program on enrollment… and the public U’s were getting steadily and substantially more affluent as a result. In some states, it’s likely a result of a decision to locate the flagship far away from the population centers (not the case in Michigan) where land was cheap when the U was being built… making the state U attractive for middle and upper class kids who “get away” but less attractive for kids from poor families who may not own a car, can’t afford transportation costs on top of everything else.
OP- thanks for posting. What a great idea and kudos to Michigan!
Michigan’s efforts seems to go beyond this in interesting ways, but I think the gist is the same.
Lower income kids don’t think about flagships as much, or don’t know, or fear rejection, or are overwhelmed by the process (with FA) with parents who aren’t college savvy, it seems.
Michigan is finding them via SAT, Texas is finding them via class rank. I like the Michigan approach with the letter and everything else. And the fact that it includes the financial piece, though to a very low income family room/board is still daunting, this puts the possibility of affording the school into play and perhaps leads to families doing the FAFSA/Profile to get that funded as well, if they financially qualify.
Note that the “overwhelmed by the process” aspect probably hurts low income students with respect to Michigan more than some other public universities. Michigan’s application requirements, described at https://admissions.umich.edu/apply/freshmen-applicants/requirements-deadlines do require the applicant to get support from others (counselor recommendation, teacher recommendation, school sending transcripts on application), which is more moving parts to contend with for a student in a situation where hardly anyone applies to a college that wants all of those things (and counselors and teachers may be less experienced at writing good recommendations). In addition, financial aid requires both FAFSA and CSS Profile (including non custodial), which means more moving parts to the application, as well as excluding most of those with divorced parents.
In contrast, the University of Texas application does not require any recommendations (optional); the only third party items are transcripts and SAT/ACT scores, according to https://admissions.utexas.edu/apply/freshman-admission . Of course, the top 6% or 10% automatic admission gives assurance for some that the application is not futile (but has some disadvantages like encouraging rank-grubbing competition in high schools). Financial aid requires FAFSA but not CSS Profile.
University of Texas - Austin has 24% (23% frosh) of undergraduates with Pell grants, in contrast to University of Michigan - Ann Arbor with 15% (17% frosh).
One genius of the Michigan experiment is writing to the principals of the school, and suggesting they meet with the student(s) and talk to them about applying to Michigan. In a rural school where few students go to four year colleges, college applications wouldn’t be part of the culture, but presumably the administration would still be proud to have graduates at Michigan and would want to facilitate their application. Even if bright young Dakota doesn’t know anything about applying to schools, her principal or some other member of the school administration could sit her down, encourage her to apply, and tell her they’ll help her.
The principal also needs to get the student’s counselor and teachers to write good recommendations for University of Michigan. Also, if the student’s parents are divorced, the non custodial parent.
In the control group (the students who were eligible for the HAIL scholarship but didn’t get the letter), 26 percent of students applied to Michigan. In the treatment group (the students who got the letter) 67 percent applied. So whatever the students/families/schools who got the letters had to do, mostly, they did it.
There are times when you don’t need to do a statistical test to know if something is statistically significant. This is one such time.
Cardinal Fang- yes, sometimes the obvious just smacks you in the face. But in this case- it leaves you with a smile. This study is all over the internet today- thanks for bringing it to our attention early.
It really is a heartwarming holiday story, isn’t it? In my imagination, some young woman in Plainwell, Michigan, is happily coming home for Christmas from her sophomore year at Michigan, wearing her maize and blue scarf. She didn’t think she could go to college at all. She thought she’d get some nothing job, but instead she’s learning and growing and having fun at one of the best colleges in the country. Her parents are so proud of their little girl. This intervention changed her life.
It might not be Plainwell, but my imagined story is true for lots of Michigan students.
I do hope Michigan has gotten rid of the control group now and sent the letters to everybody this year.
This is important stuff. I work with high needs families in my day job (no CC isn’t my day job!). There is a tremendous information gap…overcoming this gap is key. #GoBlue
The New York Times is wrong. The letter promises full tuition and fees. “Fees” don’t normally include housing and meal plans. However, the letter also says that if the students fill out financial aid forms they would likely be eligible for more aid, including for housing.
Until my son went to school in Michigan, I didn’t know about the Michigan-Ohio rivalry. As far as I am able to observe, Michiganders are required to insult Ohioans, hilariously, on all occasions, and I assume the reverse is true as well. So these compliments from Ohioans are something.
(Here’s an example from Twitter about how Michiganders view Ohio:
My 5 Point Plan to National Success:
Put me In Charge
Michigan takes over Toledo and Cedar Point
We turn Ohio into a lake (we name it Lake Inferior for obvious reasons)
The guaranteed scholarship is full tuition and fees, but on top of that scholarship, Michigan meets full need for all in-state students. Based on family income, most students eligible for the scholarship will also qualify for additional need-based FA, in some cases including room & board. You might ask, then why the scholarship? Why not just promise to meet full need? Well, they were doing that, and the message just wasn’t getting through to a lot of well-qualified, high-need students. So they established the scholarship as a separate, eye-catching way of promoting the school, and then explaining that additional FA would be available to meet any additional need. Apparently that messaging, packaged in a letter personally directed to the student, works.
By the way, Toledo was originally part of Michigan. At least, so said the U.S. Army, which dispatched a young second lieutenant named Robert E. Lee to survey the area in order to settle a boundary dispute… The Northwest Ordinance which established the Michigan and Ohio territories set the boundary at an “east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan.” That would have placed Toledo in Michigan, but early mapmakers miscalculated the location of the line, and their maps showed the line a bit north of Toledo. Lee’s survey properly set the boundary south of Toledo, placing Toledo and the “Toledo Strip” extending west to the border with Indiana in Michigan. The University of Michigan was originally founded in Detroit, but it was at that same time planning a new campus on a 900-acre site in present-day downtown Toledo. Lee’s survey didn’t settle the boundary dispute, however. Michigan and Ohio actually declared war on each other and were raising militias to commence fighting when Congress stepped in, awarding the Toledo strip to Ohio, and awarding Michigan the Upper Peninsula as a consolation prize, separating the latter from Wisconsin. Michigan was forced to accept the deal as a condition for gaining statehood.
