NASFAA's Justin Draeger talks with Ashley Rhodes-Courter, a nationally award winning writer, about the unique difficulties youth from foster care face in enrolling in college. Ashley spent several years in the foster care system before being adopted and successfully attending and graduating from Eckerd College.

Ashley provides specific examples of what college and financial aid administrators can do to help youth from foster care transition into college.

"The idea of college is pretty daunting to kids from foster care," says Rhodes-Courter. "But they'll trust college counselors and aid administrators." Ashley gives pointers to aid administrators on how talk to youth from foster care without asking them questions that might embarrass or deter them from enrolling.

Ashley Rhodes-Courter has been featured on Montel Williams, Good Morning America, and several other local and national television stations. She was most recently a featured speaker at the Child Welfare League's national conference in Washington, DC. Learn more about Ashley on her Web site at http://www.rhodes-courter.com/. Her award winning essay, Three Little Words, is also available online at http://www.rhodes-courter.com/threelittlewords.pdf.

Listen Now!

• Financial Aid Perspectives: How College And Financial Aid Administrators Can Help Youth From Foster Care (MP3, 13 minutes, 12.5 MB).

"Financial Aid Perspectives" is NASFAA's new podcast series where different points of view from the financial aid and higher education communities will be presented on issues relevant to postsecondary access. Music from this podcast comes from David Gielan's "Beautiful in Gray," podcast safe music and was released under Creative Commons.

Posted 04/14/08 to www.NASFAA.org. Redistribution to non-NASFAA institutions is prohibited. Please submit Web Site questions or comments to Web@NASFAA.org.