Listen Live
St. Jude Radiothon 2024
CLOSE

High-school students attend a college and career convention at the Los Angeles Convention Center on December 8, 2010 in Los Angeles, California.

KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/GETTY IMAGES

There’s a new player in the cluster of non-profit organizations that help high-achieving students from low-income families get into the best colleges in the nation and they’re employing a simple strategy to entice qualified students: If you get into the school of your choice, you get to for free, the New York Times reports.

And for all four years, might I add. When the founders of QuestBridge learned about some of the barriers that smart students from low-income backgrounds face, like the complicated and drawn-out financial aid process; the idea that most students often have to accept or decline a college offer before they find out if they’ve been awarded money from a traditional scholarship; and, that while a student may get a good financial aid package their first year, the college may change the package so that the student is expected to cough up some money for the remaining years, they decided to cut all of that out of the picture and lock down a 4-year tuition-free ride for some of the nation’s brightest students.

The program targets high-school juniors and entices them to apply by dishing out immediate prizes:

“To win the prize, the junior would need to fill out a detailed application, which could become the basis for his or her college application. The idea draws on social science research, which has shown that people often respond better to tangible, short-term incentives (a free laptop) than to complicated, longer-term ones (a college degree, which will improve your life and which you can afford),” the Times reports.

CLICK HERE to read story

source: Theroot.com

Leave a Reply