Dartmouth professor presents research on late intervention

Bruce Sacerdote, Richard S. Braddock 1963 Professor in Economics and chair of the Department of Economics at Dartmouth College, presented a lecture to Tufts students, faculty and staff yesterday afternoon in the Lincoln Filene Center Rabb Room at 4:30 p.m. as part of the Economics Department Seminar Series.

Sacerdote presented the findings from his working paper, "Late Interventions Matter Too: The Case of College Coaching New Hampshire," which he worked on alongside Associate Professor of Economics Scott Carrell at the University of California, Davis.

"This is something I’ve been really excited about for a long time…getting more kids to go to college," Sacerdote explained.

Sacerdote said that the jumping off point for his research, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences, was the premise that only early interventions for students effectively increase college application and attendance rates.

"People often said only early interventions matter," he noted.

Encouraging more students to apply to college is still a relevant issue. The United States has lost its competitive edge in college attendance rates compared to other wealthy countries since the mid-1990s, according to Sacerdote.

"We no longer have a massive edge in four year college graduation, and we surely used to," he said.

Sacerdote emphasized the importance and benefits of attending college.

"Everyone recognizes we haven’t had a lot of growth in the four year college rate, yet there are large returns to four year colleges," he said, noting the potential for higher incomes for college graduates as an example.

Sacerdote's experiment included a group of Dartmouth undergraduate students who volunteered once a week for 1.5- to four-hour one-on-one sessions with students over a period of three to five weeks at a number of high schools in New Hampshire. In the sessions, the mentors would help students start and complete applications to whatever school they desired, send transcripts, start the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, sign up for the SAT and send in scores.

The students identified to take part in the experiment were nominated by their respective college counselors at the participating high schools. He noted that these students were identified as "marginal" students, which indicates that they had expressed interest in going to college but had not actually taken any steps to do so.

"Many students do want to go to college, but many simply don’t do anything about it," Sacerdote explained.

The students in the nominated pool were then randomly selected to participate in the program. The experiment was considered "late intervention" because the students did not begin the mentoring program until around mid-December of their senior year.

The incentives for the students to take part in the mentoring included free coaching, the payment of their application fees, a $100 bonus upon completion, food during the sessions and an excuse to get out of class. He noted that the cash bonus did not significantly affect rates of students applying to college.

"Very few students started the program with us and failed to complete," he said.

Sacerdote found that, ultimately, the mentoring program was successful in increasing college going rates, particularly for female students, although he is not yet sure why this is.

"If you intervene at the right time, it doesn't necessarily take a tremendous amount of time or money," he said.

Sacerdote underscored the success of the experiment, adding that they certainly had an impact.

"Once we push [the students] onto a different path, they’re happy to stay on that path," he said.

There are a number of reasons that these students may not be applying to college in the first place, including a lack of available information or even internet restrictions that block college websites on high school campuses. With proper mentoring, however, these issues can be resolved, according to Sacerdote.

"I think that it’s their own fear of failure," he said. "They overestimate the barriers of applying."

He said that now that the program is over, mentoring programs like Let's Get Ready will take over the tutoring, focusing mostly on SAT preparation and mentoring for juniors.

From here, Sacerdote said he and Carrell will now focus primarily on getting their research published.

"I’ve gone from worrying about whether or not you can do it, to sales mode," he said.