Nonprofit builds a ‘Bridge to College’ for students in need
STAMFORD — Stamford Cradle to Career wants every student, regardless of race or circumstance, in Stamford Public School to succeed.
“One of the ways we do that is to focus on students transition out of high school into a post-secondary career, college, or college and a career,” said Cradle to Career President Bridget Fox. That’s why her organization, which is part of the United Way of Western Connecticut, started Bridge to College.
The Bridge to College program, which start in summer 2019, targets a phenomenon called “summer melt,” where students who are accepted to and plan on attending college in the fall do not end up matriculating when the semester begins. Years of research show that low-income students and first-generation students are more likely to fall victim to the problem, a reality reflected in the students the
program has helped.
Cradle to Career’s initiative has worked primarily in its first two years with Stamford Public Schools seniors who plan on attending Norwalk Community College, a school that the district has an established relationship with. Stamford Public Schools found that 37 percent of students from the city who plan on attending NCC don’t end up enrolling in the fall.
The barriers to college for these students can be both material and emotional, said Rebecca Wilson, Coordinator for College and Career Readiness with the school district. But one obstacle stood out overwhelmingly when trying to provide teenagers with support: the financial aid process.
“FAFSA is a challenge for many of our students,” said Wilson. “The number one barrier, and it typically is nationally, is the completion of the FAFSA process. Not just the completion, but the process.”
Past research has highlighted how prohibitive the aid process can be for some young people. The Harvard Strategic Data Project’s exhaustive handbook on summer melt reported that advisors working with a college access nonprofit based in Boston “(spent) the majority of their time with students addressing financial aid issues and helping students access and complete required paperwork” to go to school.
FAFSA, or the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is notoriously complex, and further study shows that students with the most need are least likely to fill out the form. In fact, a larger percentage of students in the lowest socioeconomic status quintile (29 percent) did not
complete the FAFSA compared to students in higher quintiles, according to research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education in 2018.
Wilson said that she and the Bridge to College team spent most of their hours helping students gather paperwork and walking families through the aid process, as some student hadn’t even begun thinking about the necessary forms the summer before they started college. Now, prioritizing FAFSA and its deadlines is integral to Bridge to College’s process.
“When we went into the new school year, we immediately started talking about the FAFSA process immediately,” Wilson said. Starting
FAFSA early is especially important with students who plan on going to a community college, she continued, because it keeps a major cause of summer melt from spiraling out of control and keeps costs down for many students. Stamford Public Schools focused in previous years on prioritizing students committed to four-year school in order to tackle additional obstacles like housing and student health insurance.
But, with community colleges, we realized that by delaying it, we were perpetuating the problem,” she said.
Financial difficulties aren’t the only issues Fox and Wilson are trying to mitigate through the pro
gram. They argue that there’s an emotional and psychological hurdle of the transition between high school and college that Bridge to College tries to lower too.
“That’s why we hired school counselors who have relationships with students and relationships with families,” Wilson said. Over the course of the summer, those counselors helped families adjust to the idea of a child transitioning from high school to college, something Wilson said Stamford Public Schools has never done before.
Counselors continue to guide students once they start school as well.
“This past fall (we hired) a retention counselor, some
one who is on-hand to work with the students over the course of the fall, to answer questions, to address any concerns that they might have around finances and how to keep up with their workload,” Fox said.
Thanks to a $15,000 grant from the Fairfield County Community Foundation, Bridge to College hopes to bring on yet another counselor to help with this next summer’s work, whether it happens virtually or in person.
“First and foremost, the foundation's mission is to close the opportunity gap,” said Janeene Freeman, who leads education, youth, and development initiatives for the foundation. “Through the Education and Youth
Development Grant portfolio, we saw this as a direct alignment with the goal of trying to help high school graduates successfully transition into that next phase of education.”
While Bridge to College has successfully helped remind students in the district of how to navigate the next stage of their lives and hopes to continue to do so, Wilson said that continuing to explain in Stamford is the opposite of what she wants to achieve.
“We want to put Bridge to College out of business,” she said “What I mean by that is, we don't want the need for students to need help over the summer to grow. We want to be there. We want to fill in the gap entirely.”