Financial Counseling for Achieve Atlanta Scholars: Getting to the Session and Changing Course?

In this report, Yue Bao and Jonathan Smith analyze whether Achieve Atlanta Scholars at Georgia State University attend and benefit from a financial counseling session in fall 2023. Achieve Atlanta Scholars are graduates of Atlanta Public Schools who have unmet financial need to attend college. Scholars were offered $100 to attend the financial counseling session. They find that one in eight Achieve Atlanta Scholars attends the financial counseling session. Using cross-tabulations and multivariate regression analyses, they find that female students, first-year students, and those enrolled at the Atlanta campus were more likely to respond to invitations. Attendance was highest among students with greater financial need and grade-point averages between 2.5 and 3.5. The authors discuss several reasons—beyond financial need—why Scholars may not have attended the session. Additionally, they do not find evidence that those who attended the financial counseling session meaningfully changed their academic or financial decisions compared to those who did not attend a session. They also discuss potential reasons for this null result but note that statistical power to detect any changes was limited by the sample size and the effectiveness of the outreach.