Kristan M Venegas

This article considers trends in state aid and research suggesting that low-income high school students do not prepare for college because they believe it is unaffordable. Authors posit a cultural ecological framework for examining how students think about going to and paying for college, asserting that preparation for college and financial aid is multifaceted and longitudinal.

In this article, the authors suggest that peers have the potential to create fictive kin networks, and in this role, peers become a social support that helps enable a culture of success. Discussing peer counselors and their role in helping students understand financial aid, the authors’ purpose is to suggest that peer groups— as social relationships that cut across classroom connections— create a viable solution that helps youth attain access to college. Findings from focus groups, observations, and interviews suggest that students benefit from the socioemotional and informational aspects of participating in peer counseling programs.

Detrimental differences in educational opportunities for students of color continue to exist in the post-Brown United States. This article focuses on inequities in access to higher education by addressing the following question: How do disparities in counseling services affect college access for students of color? Guided by a review of the literature, authors use data from a qualitative case study of high school guidance in an overcrowded school to illustrate the complexity of advising duties, structural constraints on effective guidance, and the effects of insufficient counseling on student perceptions of their support systems with regard to college-going.

This paper considers research pertaining to financial aid in college preparation programs. The paper begins by defining college preparation programs and how financial aid has been utilized in these programs. The authors point out that information pertaining to financial aid in college preparation programs has been rarely employed and rarely researched. Using the little research that does exist on college preparation programs and financial aid, the authors then suggest are search agenda that might be undertaken to determine the utility of having a financial aid component in college preparation programs. By considering the current research on college preparation programs, the authors conclude with the following question: If research on college preparation and financial aid were to be conducted what might it look like?

... In an optimistic article based on interviews with high school students, Kristan Venegas suggests that low-income students actually have a significant potential to access the Internet in ways that might make information available to them that was previously inaccessible. ...