Colleges got more rural students to apply. The challenge is getting them to attend

Admitted students and their families, including some from rural areas, take a tour of the Amherst College campus as they decide whether or not to enroll. Lucy Lu/The Hechinger Report hide caption toggle caption Lucy Lu/The Hechinger Report AMHERST, Mass. — Crowding around an Amherst College campus fire pit, earnest-looking high school seniors offered fire-building suggestions as intently as if they were taking a final exam. "This is our test of how rural you are," the college's assistant dean of admissions, Nathan Grove, joked before he finally got the neatly stacked logs to ignite so the group could make s'mores: "how good you are at making a fire." The occasion was a two-day visit to encourage admitted applicants to enroll — including this particular group. These students hail from rural places where top-ranked private colleges like Amherst rarely used to recruit. This gathering around the fire pit was an attempt to make them feel welcome. "I was frankly sort of shocked that they cared about rural students," said Jack Hancock, a high school senior from rural Milford, Pa., a town of about 1,100 on the state's eastern border with New Jersey. He had overcome the steep 1-in-13 odds of getting into Amherst and was there with his parents to decide if he'd attend. Coaxing rural high school graduates to enroll at some of the nation's most selective colleges is the next step in a campaign that started three years ago with a push to get them simply to apply. …