Good Neighbor, Great University, a Northwestern program created to offer increased financial aid to students who graduate from Evanston and other Chicago-area schools, will begin its first year with the incoming class of 2015. As admissions numbers have been released for next year’s freshman class, it appears that the program’s goal, to increase the number of Chicago-area students interested in NU, has been realized.
According to Mike Mills, NU’s associate provost for admissions, applications from the Chicago area have increased 24 percent this year from 1,022 to 1,270.From this pool, 197 students were admitted, roughly half of whom qualified for the Good Neighbor, Great University program.
University spokesman Al Cubbage said in an August 16 press release the program is estimated to save students around $7,500 per year, which would add up to about $30,000 over four years.
The original goal was for the program to assist at least 100 students this year, with hopes to increase that number to 200 within the next few years, Mills said in an email.
The University projected the cost of the program, with funding coming from what Mills called NU’s “central administration,” to be $1.25 million this year. This was an estimate for about 150 students, Mills said.
SESP senior Rosey Martinez, one of the student members of the GNGU committee and a graduate of Chicago Public Schools, said she believes the program is important.
“I wasn’t blind. I knew what I was getting into, but I didn’t realize how homogenous NU was,” she said of NU, as compared to her diverse Chicago neighborhood.
Martinez is also president of Promote 360, an organization that aims to increase diversity on campus. She said she was interested in the GNGU proposition because the goal of the program is to increase opportunities for CPS students, which correlates to increasing the opportunities for minorities because of Chicago’s demographics.
Martinez said she feels strongly that college is an opportunity everyone should have.
“I come from a very large family, and they instilled in me the value of an education,” she said. “It shouldn’t be an option; it should be instilled.”
President Morton Schapiro, since becoming president, has emphasized his commitment to making college accessible and affordable for low-income students. He said colleges should be “engines for social mobility” rather than forces for stratification, according to information on NU’s School of Education and Social Policy’s website.
“Evanston and Chicago are homes to our campuses, and as such, we want to reach out to students from those communities,” Schapiro said in a press release in August. “By instituting this program, we hope to remove any barriers regarding affordability that would prevent those students from being able to attend Northwestern.”
