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Achieve Atlanta (AATL), a nonprofit organization founded in 2015, helps Atlanta Public School (APS) students access, afford, and earn postsecondary credentials. Its vision is that Atlanta will become a place where race and income no longer predict postsecondary success and upward mobility. It does so through proving APS students with various supports in high school and in college, including a generous college scholarship to those experiencing low income.
Previous research shows that APS students who enrolled in a postsecondary institution after graduating from high school and receive AATL’s college scholarship and associated services are 14 percent more likely to persist to the second semester of college and 22 percent more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree within four-years compared to similar APS students who did not receive AATL funds and services (Authors, 2022). This research did not, however, investigate how AATL contributes to these impacts.
In this brief, we quantitatively and qualitatively assess the financial and academic outcomes of AATL scholars to gain insight into how the scholarship and services help students progress towards a college degree. The results not only have implications for AATL and other college-focused organizations, but they also highlight the barriers that students experiencing low-income face on the path through college.
Combined, our results suggest that the AATL scholarship meaningfully changes the way APS students finance their education and that these changes, in turn, help students progress academically. This speaks to and informs the work of AATL and other scholarship providers and demonstrates how the costs of college do more than deter enrollment. College costs also hamper the academic (and financial) success of matriculants.