The Hartford Public Schools students served by peer mentors in our summer transition and college retention programs showed promising results, despite starting college during a pandemic. In the spring of 2020, we targeted 308 prospective college students from Hartford, up 67% from 185 targeted in 2019. Our peer mentors contact all the HPS students who have applied to either Capital or Manchester Community Colleges, (CCC) and (MCC,) and offer to help them throughout the summer with the college matriculation process.

With our college persistence program, peer mentors work with students throughout the first semester to help them find campus resources such as academic support or financial aid; they answer questions, provide support; and remind them of deadlines for class registration. This spring, the number of first-year CCC and MCC students who persisted into a second semester reached 71%, or 92 students out of 129 enrolled, compared to the estimated average of 68% in recent years at CCC and MCC.

The charts below give further data.