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Findings show sign-up-related student characteristics mirror those of low-income students who attend four-year colleges, implying decisions largely reflect preexisting expectations. Results also indicate lower sign-up rates than previously reported. 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[http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero)  \nSign Me Up: The Factors Predicting Students’ Enrollment in an Early  \nCommitment Scholarship Program  \nDan Goldhaber  \nMark C. Long  \nUniversity of Washington  \nAnn E. Person  \nMathematica Policy Research  \nJordan Rooklyn  \nTrevor Gratz  \nUniversity of Washington  \nWe investigate factors influencing student sign-ups for Washington State’s College Bound Scholarship program and consider whether there is scope for the program to change college enrollment expectations. We find that student characteristics associated with signing the scholarship pledge closely parallel characteristics of low-income students who attend 4-year colleges, suggesting that signing the pledge is driven largely by preexisting expectations of college going. We also find evidence that student sign-up rates are lower than have been previously reported, which is important given the perception among program administrators that nearly all eligible students sign up.  \nKeywords: college financial aid, low-income youth, scholarship programs, program take-up  \nCollege and credential completion rates have recently increased for the first time since the Great Recession (Shapiro et al., 2016, 2017a), but college attainment gaps among various demographic and socioeconomic groups persist, with minority and low-income students being far less likely to obtain college degrees (Shapiro et al., 2017a, 2017b; U.S. Department of Education, 2016) . One factor that may contribute to this gap is low expectations of college attendance due to the unaffordability of college for disadvantaged youths. For instance, Perna (2008) finds that perceptions of college affordability are likely to matter to young people and that perceptions about college attainability help shape their high school trajectories (Hill & Wang, 2015; Howard, 2003) .  \nA state policy response to the relatively low level of college attainment of disadvantaged students is to make college more affordable and also alert disadvantaged students early, letting them know that college is within their grasp. One such program is an early-commitment, need-based scholarship in which states or local areas commit early in a low-income student’s schooling to provide financial aid for  \ncollege if, in return, the student pledges to do well in school and stay out of trouble. A central theory of action of these early-commitment programs is that the pledge will change students’ expectations about college while they still have time to prepare for college.  \nThere is very little evidence about the factors that predict whether students sign up for these early-commitment pledge programs.1 This is an important gap in the financial-aid and college-going literature given that students can financially and academically benefit from such programs only if they sign up for them.  \nThis paper evaluates Washington State’s College Bound Scholarship (CBS), an early-commitment scholarship that promises full tuition to low-income middle school students who participate. By examining student-level historical data and conducting qualitative interviews, this paper addresses the following questions: (a) What student and middle school characteristics are associated with signing the CBS pledge?(b) How closely do these characteristics parallel preprogram predictors of college enrollment? (c) What do program administrators report doing to encourage student uptake of  \nCreative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons  \nAttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial us","cbCaifXXa2htfeqM","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaifXXa2htfeqM","pdf",1035884,18,"English","# Sign Me Up\n## Student sign-up factors and enrollment expectations\n## Scholarship program design and theory of action\n## Research questions and methods\n## Key findings and implications","[{\"question\":\"What scholarship program does the study focus on?\",\"answer\":\"The study evaluates Washington State’s College Bound Scholarship (CBS), an early-commitment, need-based scholarship offering full tuition to low-income middle school students who participate.\"},{\"question\":\"Which student characteristics are associated with signing the CBS pledge?\",\"answer\":\"Student characteristics tied to signing the pledge closely parallel characteristics of low-income students who attend four-year colleges, suggesting pledge sign-up is driven largely by preexisting expectations.\"},{\"question\":\"How do the authors assess whether the program changes college-going expectations?\",\"answer\":\"They compare sign-up patterns across the first three CBS cohorts and relate them to preprogram predictors of college enrollment; the evidence suggests demographic patterns do not substantially change over cohorts.\"}]","Sign Me Up - The Factors Predicting Students’ Enrollment in an Early Commitment Scholarship Program | PDF",1792068367,45]