This qualitative study examined the personal experiences of scholarship recipients from the first cohort of the Washington State Achievers Program to determine the influence of the scholarship on students' lives. Focus groups were conducted with students and recent graduates at 7 undergraduate institutions and life history interviews were conducted with 8 of 15 Scholars who had represented the program in its inaugural year. Key understandings about the Achievers Scholars program derived from these interviews include how critical it was for these students, often the first in their families to attend college, to ask for and accept assistance from others, and the key role that program mentors and coordinators played in assisting students with finding the help they needed and accessing resources available to them.
Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance. (2001). Access denied: Restoring the nations' commitment to equal educational opportunity. Washington, DC: Author.
3.
BeanJ. (1980). Dropouts and turnover: The synthesis and test of a casual model of student attrition. Research in Higher Education, 12, 155–187.
4.
BeanJ. (1990). Why students leave: Insights from research. In HosslerD. & BeanJ. (Eds.), The strategic management of college enrollments. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
5.
BerknerL.HeS. & CataldiE. (2002). Descriptive summary of 1995–96 beginning postsecondary students: Six years later (No. NCES 2003-151). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences.
6.
CabreraA. F.NoraA. & CastanedaM. B. (1992). The role of finances in the student persistence process: A structural model. Research in Higher Education, 33, 5.
7.
ChoyS. P. (2000). Low-income students: Who they are and how they pay for their education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.
8.
ChoyS. P. (2002). Access & persistence: Findings from 10 years of longitudinal research on students. Washington, DC: American Council on Education.
9.
ColemanJ. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, Supplement—Organizations and Institutions: Sociological and Economic Approaches to the Analysis of Social Structure, 95–120.
10.
EatenS. B. & BeanJ. P. (1995). An approach/avoidance behavioral model of college student attrition. Research in Higher Education, 36(6), 617–645.
11.
MorrowV. (1999). Conceptualizing social capital in relation to the well being of children and you people: A critical review. Sociological Review, 47(4), 744–765.
12.
Pell Institute. (2004). Indicators of opportunity in higher education: Fall 2004 status report. Washington, D.C.: Pell Institute.
13.
PorterK. (2002). The value of a college degree. Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education.
14.
PutnamR. D. (2001). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster.
15.
RatcliffJ. L. (1991). Dropout prevention and at-risk college students. In WestL. L. (Ed.), Effective strategies for dropout prevention of at-risk youth (pp. 251–282). Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers, Inc.
16.
SandersL. & BurtonJ. D. (1996). From retention to satisfaction: New outcomes for assessing the freshman experience. Research in Higher Education, 37, 555–568.
17.
StakeR. E. (1994). Qualitative case studies. In DenzinN. K. & LincolnY. S. (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 236–247). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
18.
StraussA. & CorbinJ. (1994). Grounded theory methodology—An overview. In DenzinN. K. & LincolnY. S. (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 273–285). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
19.
ThomasL. (2002a, September). Building social capital to improve student success. Paper presented at the BERA Conference, University of Exeter.
20.
ThomasL. (2002b). Student retention in higher education: The role of institutional habitus. Journal of Education Policy, 17(4), 423–442.
21.
ThorneS. (2000). Data analysis in qualitative research. Evidence-Based Nursing, 3(1), 68–70.
22.
TintoV. (1975). Dropout from higher education: A theoretical synthesis of recent research. Review of Educational Research, 45, 89–125.
23.
TintoV. (1988). Stages of student departure: Reflections on the longitudinal character of student leaving. Journal of Higher Education, 59(4), 438–455.
24.
TintoV. (1993). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
25.
TintoV. (1997). Colleges as communities: Taking research on student persistence seriously. Review of Higher Education, 21(20), 167–177.
26.
TintoV. (2002, October 23–25). Enhancing student persistence: Connecting the dots. Paper presented at the Optimizing the Nation's Investment: Persistence and Success in Postsecondary Education, Madison, WI.
