The Impact of a College Readiness Initiative in a Large, Urban School District

The first in a series of studies, this paper describes the effect of a large, urban district implementing a PSAT/NMSQT (PN) fee waiver initiative in the 2006-07 school year in an effort to increase students’ access to feedback on their readiness for college. The results suggest that the fee waiver increased access for underrepresented and lower skill students. However, this information did not appear to translate into increased SAT participation which would be a logical next step in the college application process. Additional outreach seems needed to push students to that next level