Diverse: Issues In Higher Education
Common App, a nonprofit offering an online tool for undergraduate applications, is striving to reach more lower-income students. Despite having over 1,000 colleges in its network and reaching 1.4 million students in the 2022-23 application cycle, only 30% were from below-median income ZIP codes. To address this, Common App launched Next Chapter, aiming to get 650,000 more low- and middle-income students to use its platform by 2030. The organization also runs pilots like the Direct Admissions Program, admitting qualifying first-generation and low-income students into its network conditionally, and a partnership with Scholarship America to match students with private scholarships.