While considerable effort has been invested to increase FAFSA completion among high school seniors, there has been much less investment to ensure that college freshmen re-apply for financial aid. Text messaging is a promising approach to inform students of important stages in the financial aid re-application process and to connect them to…

U.S. social programs, set up to address important problems, often fall short by funding specific models/strategies ("interventions") that are not effective. When evaluated in scientifically-rigorous studies, social interventions in K-12 education, job training, crime prevention, and other areas are frequently found ineffective or…

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…