Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) and Accelerate, Complete, Engage (ACE)

Evidence Rating:

Top Tier

Highlights

Program:

ASAP is a comprehensive program, implemented at two-year community colleges, that provides academic, personal, and financial supports to low-income students with the goal of increasing graduation rates. ACE is an adapted version of ASAP that uses the same student support model, but is delivered at four-year (as opposed to two-year) colleges.
Evaluation Methods:

ASAP has been evaluated in three well-conducted randomized controlled trials (RCTs) – the first with a sample of 896 students at City University of New York (CUNY) community colleges, the second with a sample of 1,501 students at three Ohio community colleges, and the third with a sample of 574 students at Westchester Community College in New York state. ACE has been evaluated in one well-conducted RCT with a sample of 570 students at John Jay College (a four-year institution).
Key Findings:

All four RCTs found large, statistically-significant increases in college graduation rates in long-term follow-ups: 11 to 15 percentage point gains in two-year or four-year degree completion for ASAP, and a 12 percentage point gain in four-year degree completion for ACE. The Ohio study of ASAP also found a statistically-significant increase of 14% ($3,337) in annual earnings eight years after study entry.

[Disclosure: Arnold Ventures helped fund the Ohio, Westchester, and John Jay studies. We are also funding the delivery of ASAP at other U.S. locations.]

Originally developed by the City University of New York (CUNY), ASAP provides academic, personal, and financial supports to low-income community college students to help them earn an associate’s degree within three years. Participation is offered to new students and continuing students who have earned 12 or fewer credits, and is voluntary. Core program components include: (i) required full-time enrollment; (ii) a range of resources that ASAP students are required to use including an ASAP-dedicated advisor who helps students with academic, social, and interpersonal issues, a career counselor, and (if needed) tutoring services; (iii) special class scheduling options to ensure that ASAP students secure the classes that they need and that they take remedial classes (if needed) early in college; and (iv) financial supports such as tuition waivers equal to the difference between students’ tuition/fees and their existing financial aid, free textbooks, and gift cards for transit or food.

ACE is an adapted version of ASAP that uses the same comprehensive student support model, but is delivered at four-year (as opposed to two-year) colleges.

Colleges’ direct costs of delivering ASAP program services were estimated to be $15,292 per student in the CUNY study and $5,521 per student in the Ohio study. The direct costs of delivering ACE program services in the John Jay College study were estimated to be $12,374 per student.[1]

Click here for the CUNY ASAP|ACE Program website.

To see our full evidence summary:

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Top Tier

Programs shown in well-conducted RCTs, carried out in typical community settings, to produce sizable, sustained effects on important outcomes. Top Tier evidence includes a requirement for replication – specifically, the demonstration of such effects in two or more RCTs conducted in different implementation sites, or, alternatively, in one large multi-site RCT. Such evidence provides confidence that the program would produce important effects if implemented faithfully in settings and populations similar to those in the original studies.

Near Top Tier

Programs shown to meet almost all elements of the Top Tier standard, and which only need one additional step to qualify. This category primarily includes programs that meet all elements of the Top Tier standard in a single study site, but need a replication RCT to confirm the initial findings and establish that they generalize to other sites. This is best viewed as tentative evidence that the program would produce important effects if implemented faithfully in settings and populations similar to those in the original study.

Suggestive Tier

Programs that have been evaluated in one or more well-conducted RCTs (or studies that closely approximate random assignment) and found to produce sizable positive effects, but whose evidence is limited by only short-term follow-up, effects that fall short of statistical significance, or other factors. Such evidence suggests the program may be an especially strong candidate for further research, but does not yet provide confidence that the program would produce important effects if implemented in new settings.

References

[1] Taking into account both the direct costs of delivering ASAP/ACE program services and the indirect costs resulting from the fact that treatment group students earned more credits than control group students, the per-student cost estimates were $13,838 in the CUNY study, $8,030 in the Ohio study, and $15,694 in the John Jay College study. The CUNY cost estimate is in 2019 dollars; the Ohio cost estimate is in 2018 dollars; the John Jay College (ACE) cost estimate is in 2023 dollars.

Study 1 (CUNY)

Azurdia, G. & Galkin, K. (2020). An Eight-Year Cost Analysis from a Randomized Controlled Trial of CUNY’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs. New York, NY: MDRC.

Weiss, M.J., Ratledge, A., Sommo, C., & Gupta, H. (2019). Supporting community college students from start to degree completion: Long-term evidence from a randomized trial of CUNY’s ASAP. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 11(3), 253-297.

Gupta, H. (2017). The power of fully supporting community college students: The effects of the City University of New York’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs after six years. New York, NY: MDRC.

Scrivener, S., Weiss, M. J., Ratledge, A., Rudd, T., Sommo, C., & Fresques, H. (2015). Doubling graduation rates: Three-year effects of CUNY’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) for developmental education students. New York, NY: MDRC.

Scrivener, S., Weiss, M. J., & Sommo, C. (2012). What can a multifaceted program do for community college students?: Early result from an evaluation of Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) for developmental education student. New York, NY: MDRC.

Study 2 (Ohio)

Hill, C., Warner, K., & Sommo, C. (2025). From Learning to Earning: Eight Year Findings from the ASAP Ohio Demonstration. New York, NY: MDRC.

Hill, C., Sommo, C., & Warner, K. (2023). From Degrees to Dollars: Six-Year Findings from the ASAP Ohio Demonstration. New York, NY: MDRC.

Miller, C., Headlam, C., Manno, M., & Cullinan, D. (2020). Increasing community college graduation rates with a proven model: Three-year results from the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) Ohio Demonstration. New York, NY: MDRC.

Study 3 (John Jay College)

Scott-Clayton, J., Garfinkel, I., Ananat, E., Collyer, S., Hartley, R., Koutavas, A., Wang, B., & Wimer, C. (2024), The Net Benefits of Raising Bachelor’s Degree Completion through the City University of New York ACE Program. CCRC Working Paper.

Scuello, M., & Strumbos, D. (2024). Evaluation of Accelerate, Completed, Engage (ACE) at CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice: Final Report. New York, NY: Metis Associates and CUNY.

Study 4 (Westchester Community College)

Dai, S., Warner, K., & Sommo, C. (2025). Charting Pathways: Three-Year Findings from the Viking ROADS Demonstration. New York, NY: MDRC.

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