Young people are key to closing the national counseling gap. Our research highlights challenges, best practices, and the impact of scaling peer-to-peer advising in public institutions. We advocate for expanding these models and support institutions in training and paying young people to guide their peers to college and career success.

The Triple Impact of Peer-to-Peer Postsecondary Advising Programs

Young people encounter inequities accessing postsecondary advising and career development. In this report, we demonstrate how best practice peer-to-peer postsecondary advising programs are a cost-effective solution that simultaneously expands advising capacity, creates internships, and generates a diverse talent pipeline for the counseling and advising fields.

Why One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Blogpost: Inside Higher Ed (2024)

This blog summarizes different leaks in the transfer pipeline and CARA’s work to address them with several CUNY campuses, highlighting the importance of fitting best practices to specific contexts.

Neer-Peer Counseling Impact on Mentor’s College Outcomes

Article: Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement (2023)

Using quantitative methods, this article finds that CARA-trained Peer Leaders are nearly twice as likely to persist in college as students with similar characteristics who did not participate in our peer-to-peer advising programs.

Making Transfer Students Visible

Blogpost: Inside Higher Ed (2023)

Profiling CARA’s work at 4 CUNY campuses, this blog describes the ways peer-to-peer advisors can support incoming transfer students and make the obstacles these students face more visible for campus staff.

Don’t just listen to students, employ them

Op-Ed: City Limits (2022)

As Eric Adams began his mayoralty, CARA called on him to provide stable funding for peer leadership as a strategy for postsecondary access in NYC.

At-risk youth aren’t the problem–but they can be part of the counseling solution

Op-Ed: The Hechinger Report (2020)

CARA’s co-founders describe the importance and efficacy of using peer-to-peer advising to support postsecondary access and success.

Peer-Led College Access Programming: A Profile of Student Success Centers in NYC

This report documents the evolution of “Student Success Centers.” This model of collaboration between schools and CBOs–with trained high school students at its center–grew out of advocacy efforts by young people. This report defines best practices for Student Success Centers and explains why their existence & growth is central to post-secondary access in NYC.

Additional Research & Policy Writing

Policy ReportsResearch ArticlesOP-EDS/BLOGS