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There are multiple approaches to the issue of getting low income students into college, and yet it appears that procedural failure is commonplace. According to a recent Hechinger Report, “up to 40% of [said students] do not show up for college even though accepted.” The percentage seems high, and this lamentable situation has almost never happened to students where I have been directly involved, but I was not shocked by the list of reasons.
Here is why students did not make it to day one, despite being accepted. I have provided appropriate reactions/recommendations.

• Confusion over what is a grant and what is a loan. Grants are not repaid and loans are. The confusion sometimes begins with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) process. To elaborate, the FAFSA application typically results in a Pell Grant, which like all other grants, does not get repaid. The same application often brings Federal Direct Loans (also referred to as “Stafford”), which must be repaid; the repayment period does not start until six months after college graduation.
• Missed deadlines. High schools could do better in having homework, etc. deadlines which were not rubber in nature, flexible to the point of destroying the true meaning of the word deadline. Practice in meeting true deadlines might trigger the correct reaction to the deadlines imposed by colleges.
• Parents nixing the dorm idea as being unsafe. This is often a culturally-based objection, and it is understandable (mixed gender dorms can drive any parent a little crazy), but the decision should come earlier in the process. Nobody within commuting distance is forced to be in a dorm. The mileage to a non-commuting college is known at the beginning; it should not be a last minute discovery.
• Delay in federal loan money arriving at the college. There is no control here, except that filing the FAFSA as early as possible is always a good idea.
  Note: there has been an important recent positive change with respect to FAFSA. Students desiring to attend college in September, 2017 will be able to file FAFSA as early as October, 2016 and can use data from 2015 tax returns. This filing date is earlier in the college application, acceptance cycle than before, making financial planning easier to accomplish. The student’s ability to provide financial documentation for FAFSA is easier because the required tax return is now that of the prior year. In addition, this means that those filing FAFSA can access tax data through the IRS Data Retrieval Tool, now reportedly available to only 20% of filers.
• College bureaucratic attitudes are often intimidating. This is absolutely true, and students accustomed to being deferential to those in power are quite naturally put off. The only solution is one of perseverance, determination to reach the goal of becoming a college graduate, despite the nonsense.
• One-third of FAFSA filers are selected for verification. When a student files his FAFSA, he is told that his application might be selected for verification; this simply means that the government wants additional information. This causes some concern as undocumented parents may believe that this information is shared with other government agencies. This does not happen. Note that if a parent does not have a tax return, an employer can sign a letter verifying the person’s income.
• Confusion over the state residency requirement. Regardless of the rules at a college regarding documentation, state (public) colleges nearly all have physical residency requirements (typically one year) when it comes to the rate they charge students. Again, this fact is knowable at the outset.
• The immunization form has not been received by the college. Get this done early and be a nag about the forms being sent to the school.
• Non-payment of health insurance. Often the student believes the insurance part of the college bill is optional, when it is not unless the collegian is covered by the parents’ insurance. And the tab is maybe $1500. Again, this is a fact knowable ahead of the decision-making process.
• Young people who were prospective first generation collegians did not have somebody trusted to talk with, to get answers to the questions posed above. This is the crux of the matter, which is why my approach to interacting with a student has always (a) included a comprehensive baseline interview that is not conducted with an eye on the clock and (b) emphasized communication—creating an atmosphere in which students feel comfortable bringing questions to the fore without feeling that they would be found at fault for being uncertain about what to do in a specific circumstance.

Some observers will respond to the dynamics described above by citing the extensive information available on a long list of college-related websites, in effect saying that students should be able to independently find answers to their questions.
For others, including myself, without contradicting the existence of extensive information, the conclusion is somewhat different: clearly there is a need for more on-point guidance counseling available to low income students. This is true both at the high school level, which would be ideal, or at the various non-profit and profit-making entities alike who purport to provide that assistance. The budgetary challenge is that more informed and compassionate people, what are now called “human capital,” are needed. To use the organizational term, there is a minimum amount of “scalability,” which makes the commitment quite expensive.
Maybe there is a financial/operational compromise: a system of staffed Help Desks, located where low-income students are clustered. The focus would appropriately be on this single issue: getting these aspirational individuals into the very colleges at which they have been accepted.