SUCCESS BOSTON AT SSU: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY

by Kevin DeRuosi, Mike Ahern, Iz

abela Kaczynska, Thomas Ortiz

PROBLEM● Challenge: Increasing the education

level attainment

● How can more students be engaged to be successful in higher education?

● Inner city youth demographics and post-secondary success

● Increase in high school college completion initiatives

● Success Boston Student recruitment at Salem State University

RESEARCH PROBLEM● What does research say about college

completion initiatives in high schools and summer bridge programs?

● Are these programs successfully preparing Salem State students

● Is the additional cost of attending a Summer Bridge Program worth it for students with academic deficiencies entering post-secondary education

HYPOTHESIS

Success Boston Students who participate and complete Salem State University’s, Summer Bridge Program (SBP), will achieve a higher or equal GPA and retention rate in their first year because of the additional exposure they received in High School than the overall first year population at Salem State University.

NULL: Regardless of their exposure to Success Boston programming in High School, students completing the Summer Bridge Academy will not exhibit any overall positive or negative outcome.

SAMPLE

● 85 participants● 28 males● 57 females● three cohorts of SBA students over past five

years

DESIGN - Descriptive Study● Upon approval from the institution we collected the following data: Age, Gender,

High School GPA, SAT Score, First and Second Term GPA, Parent’s Highest Grade Completed, Estimated Family Contribution (EFC) [as determined by FAFSA] and Total Loan Debt at the end of the First Academic Year.

● Data was delivered by the Office of Institutional Advancement and Development stripped of all identifying information

● Analysis would utilize basic descriptive statistic to reach quantitative summaries of the data elements

● These summaries were then studied and observations/trends were extracted using simple bivariate analysis.

INSTRUMENTS

The statistical data used:

● High School GPA, SAT/ACT Scores,

● Term & CUM GPA for freshman year,

● Enrollment status at culmination of 1st year,

● Pell eligibility,

● 1st generation student status,

● Aggregate loan totals at end of first year.

RESULTS

RESULTS

RESULTS Female vs Male GPAs (for both semesters)

71.4% 71.4% 74.5%

57.7%

% o

f Fem

ale

and

Mal

e G

PA o

f 2.0

or b

ette

r

RESULTS

Tyson, C. (2014). To maximize graduation rates, colleges should focus on middle-range students, research shows

RESULTSAverage Loan Debt High School GPA

< 2.0 GPA after 2nd SSU SemesterMales

> 2.0 GPA after 2nd SSU SemesterMales

< 2.0 GPA after 2nd SSU SemesterFemales

> 2.0 GPA after 2nd SSU SemesterFemales

LIMITATIONSResearch Sample:

● Using a target sampling method that focused on a sub-group (Success Boston Students) within an already existing sub-group (Summer Bridge Academy [SBA]) limited our ability to have an equal amount of males and females.

● This we feel affected our ability to gain a fully accurate portrayal of the selected student population. For this reason, we feel that results of the analysis should be viewed as “trends” as opposed to statistical fact.

● One data element studied, Total Loan Debt, additionally hindered our sample size. Prior to institutional policy changes in 2009, SBA program participants were not eligible to have federal aid applied to their summer expenses . This limited the number of cohorts we could retrieve data from, without skewing analysis results.

IMPLICATIONS● Our study suggests that when recruiting and admitting Success Boston Students to the

Summer Bridge Academy, administrators may wish to direct their focus to students possessing high school GPA’s on the higher end of the range.

● Conversely, attention should be paid to male students High School GPA , focusing primarily on those which plot on higher end of the range.

● Doing so not only would enhance the success rate of the students enrolled, justifying, to a degree the additional loan debt incurred by attending the SBA. Additionally, it could strengthen the degree attainment rate for the program overall.

● Before making any commitment to changing admission standards, a full study should be conducted. The study should be two-fold:

1. A descriptive study of all Success Boston Students, active or inactive, enrolled at Salem State University

2. A Comparative Study of Success Boston Students against other students with like demographics, from similar school districts in Massachusetts