uAspire Bay Area

What’s the challenge?

Every year, in communities around the country, 12th graders in the spring excitedly pick a college to attend—yet 10% to 40% of these college-intending recent high school graduates don’t enroll in the fall. This well documented phenomenon—which is particularly prevalent for youth from low-income homes—is known as "summer melt."

What causes summer melt?

To successfully enroll in college, students must take numerous steps over the summer—like signing for student loans, registering for orientation, and paying the first term bill.

But the barriers abound: from no longer having school staff to ask for help—to often not having family members with college-going experience—to not yet checking the college email accounts and web portals that colleges use to communicate.

As a result, students often don’t have the knowledge, awareness, or guidance to follow through on critical requests coming in from their college over the summer.

What is uAspire’s innovative solution?

Text-messaging!

That’s right—we pack big, complex, critical content into the tiny format of text messages—and to great effect. This model has proven in uAspire’s other sites to counteract summer melt, increasing college enrollment by as much as a statistically significant 15%!

In the gallery images above, you can check out an example from our local pilot of this program last summer.

Origin of the innovation:

In 2011, when researchers Ben Castleman and Lindsay Page first approached uAspire (in Boston) about tackling the challenge of summer melt, we knew there had to be a way to ensure that college acceptance leads to college matriculation and, ultimately, college success. We have a strategic partnership with Signal Vine—the technology platform that allows us to text key reminders to students en masse—yet personalized to each student and their college—and to continue advising students individually via back-and-forth messaging. We found an intervention that’s simple, efficient, scalable, viable anywhere, and incredibly age-appropriate (teenagers are never without their phones!).

Our summer texting allows us to keep removing the barriers to higher education no matter where students go to college—and to keep tailoring our guidance to each student’s personal path to and through college.

uAspire Bay Area’s take on texting:

Our one-on-one college affordability advising starts in the fall of 12th grade, enabling students to find an affordable post-secondary plan. With your help, our services can last through college matriculation—ensuring students get a successful start to college, too.

This school year, in partnership with 11 high schools and one community-based organization, our College Affordability Advisors are advising 1,115 12th graders in San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward through the process of finding an affordable way to attend college. With summer texting, we can ensure that they successfully make it to their first day of the huge next chapter of their lives.

How can you help prevent summer melt?

This summer, providing uAspire’s text-messaged advising to our 1,115 graduating seniors will cost $40,000—that’s just $36 per student!!

That’s right. For every $36 we raise, that’s another student we can ensure transitions into college. We will be so grateful if you would consider supporting at least one of our students this summer! Or fund a whole classroom! Or an entire senior class!!!!

We’d also love it if you would help us spread the word about our summer melt-defying work! You can send out an email, like us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/uaspirebayarea), and tweet about us (@uAspireBayArea).

About uAspire Bay Area

uAspire came to the Bay Area thanks to a five-year seed investment from the venture philanthropy firm the GreenLight Fund. In January 2014, uAspire Bay Area began serving students. From the outset, we set an ambitious goal to grow to serve a significant portion of the region’s low- and moderate-income youth. We aim to support almost 5,000 students annually by our fifth year.