The Impact of Virtual College Advising on Disadvantaged Students' Access to Information and Social Support

• In Event: Roundtable Session 30
  In Roundtable Session: Interventions and Outreach to Improve College Access

Abstract

Despite large benefits to attending college, youth from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to attend college than their more-advantaged peers. This paper highlights the results of a randomized field trial of two variants of V-SOURCE, a college-counseling intervention designed to address informational and social support barriers to college enrollment, as well as students’ tendency to forget or procrastinate deadlines. V-SOURCE served students from the spring of the junior year through the summer after high school graduation and was delivered “virtually” via the internet, phone, email, text message, and social networking platforms, making it relatively low-cost and scalable. This paper describes the extent to which V-SOURCE changed students’ access to information and perceptions of social support during the college application process.

Authors

• Meredith Phillips, University of California - Los Angeles

• Sarah Reber, University of California - Los Angeles