Now in its second year, the Chicago Star Scholarship program at City Colleges of Chicago is helping nearly 2,000 Chicago Public School (CPS) graduates attend college tuition-free this fall, a 20 percent increase in new scholars this year over last year. In the fall 2016 semester, City Colleges welcomed 1,017 Star Scholars – up 20 percent from fall 2015, with more qualified students expected to enroll throughout the academic year. As participation in the program increases, Star Scholars have proven to exceed GPA and retention rates set forth at two-year colleges, suggesting that Star students are more likely to persist in their coursework toward a degree than their peers. In addition to increasing enrollment, the Chicago Star Scholarship program has successfully retained students with 86 percent of Star Scholars enrolled last fall returning to City Colleges for the fall 2016 term, suggesting that students enrolled in this program are highly likely to persist in their coursework toward a degree.

That rate is nearly double the national fall-to-fall retention rate for two-year public college students, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s most recent report which found that just 48.5 percent of students return to the same institution within the same fall-to-fall semester time period. Star Scholars who returned to City Colleges are also succeeding in the classroom, with an average 2.83 institutional GPA, the equivalent of a “B/B-” grade on average, as tracked for fall 2015 and spring 2016 semesters, compared to a 2.74 GPA for non-Star, non-remedial City Colleges credit students. The Star Partners are: Columbia College, DePaul University, Dominican University, Governors State University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Loyola University, National Louis University, North Park University, Northeastern Illinois University, Northwestern University, Robert Morris University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Roosevelt University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. For more information about the Chicago Star Scholarship at City Colleges of Chicago, visit: www.ccc.edu/starscholarship.