Students from rural areas struggle to adjust to college life as they leave family and smaller communities for large and often overwhelming environments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It was hard to leave the security of such a well established network and go into this unknown,” said Kennan Chojnacki, a junior from Marshfield, a town of 18,000 about 35 miles southwest of Wausau.
Rural students' rates of college enrollment are much lower than their urban peers — fewer than 20% of adults in rural counties have a bachelor's degree compared to 50% of adults in urban areas.
Peer advisors from UW-Madison's College for Rural Wisconsin, a program created following UW-Madison’s partnership with the Small Town and Rural Students College Network, help rural students like themselves navigate UW-Madison.
Avery Simpson, a peer advisor and student from Brooklyn, Wisconsin, a town of 1,500 18 miles from Madison, said she struggled with networking.
“Figuring out how to build connections with people when you're in a 300-person chemistry class was a pretty big challenge,” Simpson said.
Jack Taylor, another peer advisor from Princeton, Wisconsin, a town of just over 1,000, highlighted how overwhelming cities can be.
“It just feels like you're either a cog in a machine or you've just been thrown into the grinder,” Taylor said.
In a survey sent out last spring, the College for Rural Wisconsin found that 82% of rural-identifying UW-Madison students felt somewhat or unprepared for college, director Jennifer Blazek said.
Blazek said students identified a need for financial and social support, including improved mental health services to support their transition, and found the transition from rural to urban life “isolating and overwhelming,” echoing Simpson and Taylor’s experiences.
To address recruitment issues for students from rural areas, the College for Rural Wisconsin presents to schools across the state and tailors advising to the needs of individual schools and prospective students.
Simpson said she encourages prospective UW-Madison students to get out of their comfort zone.
“That's where the most growth comes from. That's where you'll see the most learning take place,” Simpson said.
Along with infographic handouts and Q&A panels, the College for Rural Wisconsin has a text hotline where students can connect directly with a peer mentor for one-on-one advice.
“It makes sense with the population that we work with,” Simpson said. “You know, you want that social interaction, that closeness.”
The team also hosts College 2 U roadshow and presents at other youth-focused events. This year, they held a panel at the World Dairy Expo, an event that draws more than 4,000 rural students to Madison, according to Blazek.
The ability to connect with peer advisors from the same background shows first-generation rural students that college is a possibility.
“When you meet a 17-year-old that is just like, hyped about what they want to do, you can't help but get a little bit excited for them,” Taylor said. “My favorite thing is just the enthusiasm around it. It's infectious.”
In the future, they are looking to expand their team, connect with more high schools across Wisconsin and host community lunches. They want to focus not just on recruiting college students but providing resources to help retain students.
“It's great if [universities] try to bring in another 20 students who are rural, but how do you keep them from transferring out? If they don't feel they belong or they feel lost or disconnected? [Peer advisors] set them up for success,” Blazek said.
