As Buffalo students enter the third year of the Say Yes to Education program, a UB researcher is learning about students and the college application process.
Nathan Daun-Barnett is an associate professor of educational leadership and policy. He runs a team which has been helping students work their way through the financial aid process, the dreaded FAFSA form.
It's a complicated process which can become even more complicated for students with tangled personal lives, like divorced parents. Parents don't understand how it all works because they didn't go through the college process.
Financial aid is the key to college through Say Yes for most of the students. Daun-Barnett says there is a basic problem of kids not knowing much about college
"My kids are here with me now and they come with me to the university all the time. College will be second nature to them by the time they decide to make that decision," Daun-Barnett said.
"Most of the students that I work with if they've been to a college campus have only been there because they did a field trip in their high school and they don't tend to spend an awful lot of time there and it still feels like a foreign environment."
Daun-Barnett says he works with many kids from Bennett High School, almost none of whom have ever been to nearby Canisius College.
