Top U.S. colleges are trying harder to recruit and retain rural students; admission offers rose by 12.9% over last year

The STARS College Network works to help rural students get into
selective colleges and succeed as undergraduate students. (Adobe Stock photo)

Rural students often graduate from high school with better grades and test scores than their suburban and urban counterparts, but that rarely leads to them graduating from top U.S. college programs. To address this disparity, the STARS College Network has been working to engage and support rural undergraduates "to feel more at home at selective colleges," reports Rebecca Koenig of EdSurge. 

The STARS program brought together "16 public and private institutions committed to improving their efforts at attracting and retaining students who grew up in rural communities," Koenig writes. "Programs at member colleges include hosting summer learning opportunities and on-campus recruitment events for high schoolers and sending more admissions staff out to high schools in small towns."

The network began in 2023 and has flourished. "The consortium announced that it is doubling its membership — to include 32 colleges and universities," Koenig explains. "This growing interest is a recognition of the fact that although federal data shows 90 percent of students from rural regions graduate from high school, only about half go directly to college."

During middle school and high school, many rural students are less likely to be exposed to higher education opportunities. Historically, more selective colleges did not actively recruit in smaller communities. "Students at rural high schools may lack access to adequate counseling about college options and financial aid," Koenig reports. "Or they may not be offered classes that selective institutions look for among applicants, such as calculus."

Rigorous recruitment efforts by STARS College Network schools created a substantial increase in college offers to rural students. Koenig adds, "STARS schools extended more than 11,000 offers of admission to the Class of 2028, which was a 12.9% increase over the number of admissions offers made to rural students in their applicant pools last year."

STARS colleges see rural student retention as equally important to admission. Each school has a structure designed to help rural students transition to bigger city and school life. Avery Simpson is a STARS mentor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She told Koenig: “Coming from a rural community, sometimes we forget we’re capable of doing what other people can do. . . . I can see the impact I’m making on these students, and I can see myself in these students.”

To view the STARS College Network list of participating institutions, click here.