Growing up, Milod Vahid planned to attend a four-year university. Although his parents did not attend college, they taught him the power of education and expected him to pursue a college degree.
But then his father died, and when the pandemic hit while he was in high school, his mother lost her retail job. His dream was no longer financially feasible for his family.
Instead, he attended nearby Northern Virginia Community College, hoping to earn an associate’s degree in computer science and transfer to a state college.
He did so well in his first semester that he was invited to join a pilot program that helps high-achieving students transfer to top four-year colleges. Through this, Waheed learned about colleges he knew little about and never thought about. He graduated with an associate’s degree and enrolled this fall as a computer science major at Pomona College in southern California.
Waheed was one of 372 students who participated in the Transfer Scholars Network pilot program, developed by the college’s Aspen Institute Excellence Program to help community college students navigate the complex transfer process. The pilot program, which began in January 2021, targets students who tend to have fewer opportunities to pursue higher education — about 70 percent were students of color, 75 percent came from families earning less than $50,000 a year , and about 60 percent were first-time students. in his family to go to college.
Students were connected to four-year college admissions offices and received support throughout the transfer process, said Tanya LaViolet, director of undergraduate preparation for the Aspen Institute’s Program for College Excellence.
“The long-term vision is to contribute to a future where any community college student across the country can see how far their talent can take them,” LaViolet said.
Eight community college systems and 14 select four-year colleges have joined the pilot program. Community College Systems:
- Broward College
- Community College of Baltimore County
- Holyoke Community College
- Indian River State College
- LaGuardia Community College
- Miami Dade College
- Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College
- Northern Virginia Community College
- Queensboro Community College
- San Jacinto College
Four-year partner institutions:
- Amherst College
- Bowdoin College
- Johns Hopkins College
- Cornell University
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Mount Holyoke College
- Pomona College
- Princeton University
- Rice University
- Smith College
- Spelman College
- Swarthmore College
- Yale University
- Williams College
About one-third of students in the pilot program applied to partner four-year schools; of these, about 20 percent were accepted and 12 percent enrolled. The organization sees this admission rate as a successful start because the typical admission rate for these highly selective schools is about 15 percent. Another 30 percent of the program’s students enrolled in a four-year college with a graduation rate of at least 70 percent. Students who have not yet transferred can remain in the program and access all resources and support until they transfer, said Adam Rabinowitz, a spokesman for the Aspen Institute.
On the topic: A new way to help students transfer: admit them to two schools at the same time
Most students who enter community colleges do not transfer to four-year schools or earn bachelor’s degrees, although many strive to do so. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found this out 25 percent of low-income students who enrolled in community colleges for the first time in fall 2015 transferred to a four-year school, and only 11 percent earned a bachelor’s degree within six years of first enrolling in a community college. Data show that these rates are higher for students from higher-income families.
Transferring often presents students with financial barriers (tuition at four-year colleges is typically much higher than community colleges), challenges navigating complex transfer processes, and the loss of hard-earned credit hours.
Report for 2018 The America’s Talent Initiative, of which the Aspen Institute is a part, estimated that about 50,000 high-achieving students from low- and moderate-income families could transfer to four-year colleges every year, but no. This program was designed to reduce that number and help students reach their full potential, LaViolet said.
“I would probably just assume, ‘Oh man, I shouldn’t even bother, you know, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford it.’
Chase Kuhleman, a Transfer Scholars Network student currently majoring in business at Cornell University
“Higher education is really waking up to the diversity, the little ‘D’ that students can bring to their campuses, specifically, they bring diversity of experience, they can bring diversity of race and economic status to American life,” said Giuseppe Basili, the Foundation’s executive director. Jack Kent Cooke, who helps fund the Transfer Scholars Network. “When we have a 40-year-old scholar at a place like Williams, for example, we know that he brings a perspective to the classroom that other students who are recent high school graduates can’t bring.”
And these students represent untapped potential for colleges struggling with admissions, Basili said. For many reasons, he said, “this is a really important group of people to follow.”
Basile said the foundation also offers scholarships to transfer students and tries to supplement their experience with some of the things higher-income students might have, such as paying for the student’s family to visit them their first year. (The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.)
On the topic: Hooked on students, colleges are finally starting to clear the transfer logjam
LaViolet said that students who successfully transfer from community college and succeed at selective four-year colleges tend to have some mentor close to them who tells them they might be a good fit at a selective college.
“That trusted mentor was really the starting point,” LaViolet said. “So what the Transfer Scholars Network is trying to do is replicate that in a systematic way.”
Professors and counselors at participating community colleges select students based on academic promise, financial need, life and professional experience, and readiness for transition, and invite them to apply to the program.
When Waheed was nominated at the end of his first year, he thought, “Why not take advantage of all the opportunities?”
For Waheed, being able to learn about colleges he’d never heard of and talk to admissions officers made him think colleges he previously thought would be out of reach, he said. He also realized that things like freshman support, which he didn’t know colleges could offer, were important to him, and he wanted to find a school with strong support for transfer students, which he found at Pomona.
On the topic: Why so few students transfer from community colleges to four-year universities
For their model to work, LaViolet said, four-year schools must “provide a campus experience and a campus culture that ensures their students can thrive.”
Although support from the Transfer Scholars Network officially ends when a student enters a four-year school, Chase Kuleman said people from the program have reached out to him to check in on him and make sure he’s adjusting to life on campus.
Kuleman, now a business major at Cornell University, was raised by a single mother in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When Covid-19 thwarted his plans to attend music school and pursue his dream of becoming a professional pianist, he had to turn around. He decided to go into business and earned an associate’s degree from Delaware County Community College.
Now he’s almost done with this first semester at Cornell, and Kulleman said he’s getting along well with his roommates, making friends and enjoying his classes. Without the Transfer Scholars Network, he probably wouldn’t exist, he said.
“I would probably just assume, ‘Oh man, I shouldn’t even bother, you know, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford it,'” Kuleman said.
This story about student translators prepared The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Subscribe to Hechinger Newsletter.
