Combating Summer Melt: The Impact of Near-Peer Mentor Matriculation Program in New York City

Abstract

College education plays a crucial role in upward social mobility. However, despite applying to and being accepted by colleges, students often fail to matriculate—a phenomenon known as “summer melt”. The summer after high school graduation is a vulnerable period for these students due to limited counseling support from both high schools and accepted colleges. While summer counseling has been studied as an intervention to address summer melt, little research exists on programs using “near-peer” counselors, despite evidence from smaller-scale interventions suggesting their positive impact and cost-effectiveness. This study utilizes administrative data for 54,000 New York City high school seniors who graduated in June 2020 at the peak of the COVID-19 Pandemic. It aims to examine the impact of a remote near-peer college matriculation support program on students’ enrollment in Fall 2020 using propensity score matching. The results indicate that the program increased matriculation by seven percentage points. Notably, it proved particularly effective for Black and Hispanic students, as well as students residing in low-income neighborhoods—groups that are typically underserved in higher education. These findings, drawn from the largest public school system in the nation, offer evidence supporting the efficacy of near-peer mentoring programs in promoting college matriculation.