College Advising at the High School and College Levels: A Review of Existing Evidence

College advising programs at high school and college levels provide support so that students can attend or can continue to attend college. These programs provide varied services depending on whether they serve high school or college students. The goal of these programs is to improve educational attainment and to help students overcome both financial and nonfinancial barriers to continuing their educational careers. At the high school level, they provide help with completing college applications, college choice, and eventual matriculation. At the collegiate level, they provide academic, financial, and other forms of support aimed at reducing dropout rates. At the high school level, the programs generally improve college attendance and allow students to attend higher quality universities than they might have otherwise attended. At the college level, the existing evidence is mixed with the largest impacts on continuing college attendance coming from comprehensive programs that provide multifaceted supports helping students access existing services throughout their respective universities. Most of these programs are small, and a continuing challenge in this literature is to scale successful programs in cost-effective ways. The increasing use of technology in these programs provides new challenges and opportunities.