Helping rural – At Amherst and other STARS College Network schools, outreach is moving beyond getting rural students to apply—toward helping them enroll, stay, and graduate. The effort, funded by Byron Trott’s foundation, is expanding the pipeline while tackling cost, belongi
When the fire finally caught at Amherst College. the moment was meant to be light—admitted seniors swapping tips around a campus fire pit. trading nervous smiles as the smoke rose.. But the two-day visit that brought them there is serious work: persuading rural students from across the country to not only enroll at a highly selective college. but to make it through.
“This is our test of how rural you are, is how good you are at making a fire,” Nathan Grove, Amherst’s assistant dean of admissions, joked as he helped the group get their s’mores going.
For Jack Hancock, the campfire was almost secondary to what brought him there. A high school senior from rural Milford, Pennsylvania, Hancock said he overcame odds of one in 13 to get into Amherst. He came with his parents to decide whether to sign up—and he did.
The visit is part of a larger shift under the STARS College Network, designed first to bring more rural students into the application pipeline and now to tackle the harder step: retention, graduation, and full college participation.
The effort began three years ago after Byron Trott. a wealthy Missouri-born alumnus and trustee of the University of Chicago. grew concerned that too few rural students were reaching college.. While nearly a quarter of Americans live in rural areas. Trott learned that only 3 percent of students at his alma mater were from rural backgrounds.
Since then, his foundation has poured $150 million into STARS, which has grown from 16 member schools to 32. Those include Brown, the California Institute of Technology, Columbia, Dartmouth, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the University of California, Berkeley, and Yale.
With that support, participating schools have agreed to recruit at rural high schools that admissions officers have often not visited. A 2019 study cited by STARS found that admissions staff are more likely to appear at higher-income public and private high schools in cities and suburbs.
The recruiting push appears to be working at the “to college” stage. More than 90,000 rural students applied to STARS member institutions last year, up 15 percent from the previous year.
Now, STARS leadership says the campaign has moved into the “through college” phase—an admission shift that acknowledges how quickly early promises can turn into attrition.
Marjorie Betley, deputy director of admissions at the University of Chicago and STARS’ executive director, put it plainly: “This process is moving into not just the ‘to college’ part but the ‘through college’ part.”
That focus comes as evidence and lived experience point to hurdles after enrollment.. Rural Americans are less likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to believe college benefits students. a Quinnipiac University poll found—along with a sense that college can harm personal values and political views.
Hancock said many classmates and families he talked to didn’t view college as worth it. He added that most who do pursue higher education in his circle go to community college or a local state university rather than a selective institution.
That skepticism is sometimes reinforced by rural cultural signals. Hancock described how, when his brother enrolled at a private college last year, his mother, Jodi, bought the smallest-size car window decal of the college logo—so it wouldn’t draw attention.
“That’s a rural cultural idea, that you don’t want to put yourself better than anybody,” Hancock quoted his mother as saying. “We certainly didn’t want to put on airs.”
Even when ambition exists, price can get in the way. The U.S. Department of Agriculture calculates that rural households’ median income is 12 percent lower than the national average, even after adjusting for lower cost of living.
On campus tours, the difference can be visible, Hancock said. He described noticing more wealth—people he associated with suburban backgrounds and, at times, designer fashions.
Other obstacles are harder to count but show up in patterns of college outcomes. National Student Clearinghouse figures cited in the report show rural students are more likely to drop out than urban and suburban classmates, and are less likely to reach graduation.
Hancock is not alone in describing the emotional weight that can come with elite campuses.. At Chugiak. Alaska. Olivia Meier. a college-bound high school senior. said two things have held back friends: “The first is cost. and the second is not knowing what we’re capable of.” Her school’s graduation rate is 91 percent—above the national average—but only 48 percent of its graduates go on to college. state figures show.
Meier said students often believe elite schools are out of reach. “A lot of people, they just don’t see it in the cards for them,” she said. They assume “the schools are too selective for us to be able to get into.”
For Meier, self-doubt eased when someone ahead of her class was admitted to the University of Chicago. “I was absolutely shocked, because for me those schools were always something far out that wouldn’t necessarily be available to me,” she said.
She was later accepted to Amherst through early decision.
But admissions wins can be fragile. Mara Tieken, a professor of education at Bates College in Maine and author of “Educated Out: How Rural Students Navigate Elite Colleges — and What It Costs Them,” described how unfamiliar elite environments can feel to students coming from small towns.
“A selective college campus ‘is a pretty rarefied environment,’” Tieken said. “No one hunts. No one shops at Walmart. No one listens to country music. So some of the things that would have seemed so familiar to my students would be totally foreign.”
STARS schools say preparation gaps and weak networks can compound that foreignness, especially for students from lower-income rural families.. The proportion of rural Americans age 25 and older with associate degrees or higher is about a third. compared to nearly half in cities and suburbs. the article reports.
That reality helps explain why STARS includes steps that aim to reduce isolation before decisions are locked in. Among the initiatives tied to accepted-student visits, several member schools pick up the tab for rural prospective and admitted applicants to spend a day or two on campus.
More than 1,000 students took advantage of that opportunity last year, sitting in on classes and meals, attending social events, and sleeping over.
At Amherst, that kind of firsthand exposure is paired with outreach roles intended to make recruitment more consistent—not just occasional.
Grove, the assistant admissions dean, now serves as coordinator of rural outreach. He said rural students he’s met “have a lot less access to things that would prepare them for college.”
Ryan Peipher. a neuroscience major at Amherst who was admitted before the school began concerted efforts to increase rural enrollment. described what it looked like to be surrounded by students with different backgrounds.. A “good portion of Amherst students” came from private Northeastern schools. Peipher said—students who had completed upper-level chemistry and other advanced classes rural students may not have encountered.
Network access also matters, he said, especially after arriving at an elite campus where connections can determine opportunities.
“It’s very easy for a student who comes to Amherst from a Philadelphia private school to network with someone who is also in finance who they know from a family friend. ” Peipher said.. “But for a student from rural America who doesn’t have any family members or any connections to the finance industry. how can they network?. How can they get that first leg up?”
Still, Amherst officials and advocates argue that rural representation benefits both students and institutions. Michael Elliott, the college’s president, said students who grow up rural bring perspectives and experiences that students from urban environments don’t.
“In a polarized time. ‘students growing up in rural areas bring perspectives and experiences that students from urban environments don’t have. ’” Elliott said.. “They’ve grown up in different regions where maybe the politics feel different. where the culture feels different. and we are interested in the prospect of bringing students together with a diversity of experiences to learn from one another.”
Amherst’s own numbers show the recruiting strategy has had measurable impact. Last year, after joining STARS, the college admitted 96 students from small towns and rural areas, up from 70 the year before—supported in part by comparatively generous financial aid funded by its $3.9 billion endowment.
The proportion of rural students on campus rose from 6 percent to 11 percent, the college spokeswoman said. This year, Amherst accepted 119 rural applicants.
While those changes may look modest, advocates say they matter for rural communities where opportunity is limited. A Gallup survey cited in the reporting found fewer than half of people in their teens and 20s are hopeful they’ll find good jobs.
Betley said she’s also started to see attitudes shift. As STARS expands, she said, admissions officers are finding rural recruitment easier than before—because colleges have increasingly shown up rather than remaining distant.
“That may sound counterintuitive.. But part of the reason that distrust can grow. especially when we think about distrust in higher education. is that as colleges and universities. we haven’t been there for them. ” Betley said.. “We haven’t shown up, and we haven’t shown them that we are people who you can trust.”
For some rural students, the select college experience still feels unreal until it happens. Kara Lewis, an Amherst junior from Mardela Springs, Maryland, said elite institutions “seems mystical.”
“Doing it herself,” she found something unexpected: returning home became easier to value rather than escape.. “There’s a very romantic sense that lots of students have coming from rural areas where it’s. like. ‘I wish I could get out of here. ’” Lewis said.. “In fact, she said of her hometown, ‘I realized how unique it was.. And I love it, like I never did when I was actually living there.’”
Peipher, now a junior at Amherst, said he plans to go to medical school and return to his rural community to work as a doctor.
“Once you do get away, you experience how special it was to grow up in that small town, and also the impact you can have,” he said. “You’re determined to go back and make that change, make that difference.”
rural students STARS College Network Amherst College college admissions higher education access financial aid retention college graduation University of Chicago Nathan Grove Marjorie Betley