How Far from Home Do US Students Travel to Attend College? ACT Report Shows Higher-Achieving Students Travel Farther Than Lower-Achieving Students

ACT, via a kind reader:

IOWA CITY, IOWA--The greater a student's academic achievement, the farther away from home that student is likely to attend college, according to a new research report from ACT. The findings of the report, entitled College Choice Report--Part 2: Enrollment Patterns, point to an opportunity to better inform lower-achieving students of the choices available to them.

The ACT research shows that 2012 U.S. graduates who took the ACT®college readiness assessment attended college a median distance of 51 miles from their home. That median distance, however, increases dramatically as ACT composite scores go higher.

For students with an ACT composite score of 28 to 36--the upper scoring range on the 1 to 36 scale--the median distance from home to college was more than 113 miles; for students with a score of 33 or higher, the median distance was 170 miles. In contrast, students who earned an ACT composite score below 24 attended college a median distance of less than 50 miles from home.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at July 21, 2013 12:19 AM
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