Read Superintendent Watlington’s congratulations message to the Class of 2026!
Summer melt refers to the phenomenon in which a high school senior’s intention to attend college in the fall “melts away” during the summer. This slide deck presents summer melt findings for the class of 2024-25.
In the School District of Philadelphia (SDP), the summer melt rate is calculated as the percentage of graduating 12th grade students who intend to go to college but do not matriculate within the first fall after graduation. This brief examines patterns in summer melt rates from 2015-16 to 2023-24 and then looks more closely at characteristics of summer melt for the graduating classes of school years 2021-22, 2022-23, and 2023-24.
Research has found that many high school graduates who intend to enroll in post-secondary education do not follow through with their intentions, a pattern known as “summer melt.” This brief summarizes findings from a study of the summer melt rates of the 2021 cohort of college-intending School District of Philadelphia (SDP) high school seniors.
This brief summarizes findings from a study of the “summer melt” rates of the cohort of college-intending 2020 School District of Philadelphia (SDP) seniors.
This brief examines “summer melt” rates (or the rates at which students who said they intended to pursue post-secondary education as seniors did not enroll in college the following fall) among student subgroups in the SDP senior classes of 2017, 2018, and 2019.
A summary of the “summer melt” rates of 2017 SDP high school seniors.