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Ten Texts to College: Can Text Messages Mitigate Summer Attrition among College-Intending Low-Income High School Graduates?
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Abstract

Despite decades of policy intervention to increase college entry among low-income students, considerable gaps by socioeconomic status remain. To date, policy makers have largely overlooked the summer after high school as an important time period in students' transition to college. In Summer 2012, the authors designed a randomized trial to investigate the efficacy of text messaging as a strategy to mitigate summer attrition. In collaboration with five urban school districts, implemented was a text messaging campaign in which the authors sent students (and in four school districts, their parents) a series of 8-10 text message reminders of key tasks to complete over the summer. The reminders were customized to the institutions at which students intended to enroll and provided recipients with the option of requesting help from a counselor. Approximately 25 percent of treatment group students clicked through at least one of the customized links included in the messages, while 35-50 percent of recipients responded to at least one message. Of these respondents, a considerable share requested a counselor meeting. In addition, counselors commonly indicated that the text messaging campaign allowed them to focus more time on providing students with college-related services rather than doing outreach. These findings are relevant both to ongoing policy efforts to increase college-going among low-income students, and more generally to efforts to harness technology to improve students' educational outcomes.

Citation

Castleman, B.L. & Page, L.C. Ten Texts to College: Can Text Messages Mitigate Summer Attrition among College-Intending Low-Income High School Graduates?. Retrieved March 19, 2024 from .

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