Title of Effective Practice: - California Postsecondary Education ...

Direct Connection to Policy Area 2 of The Illinois Commitment
ISAC Adds IllinoisMentor to the College Zone Web Site
Illinois Student Assistance Commission
What issue or need is addressed by the effective practice? The Illinois Student Assistance Commission’s (ISAC’s)
outreach mission is to ensure that the general public, and specifically low-income students, first-generation college
students, and adults considering enrolling in college, are aware of free career and college planning tools and financial aid
opportunities. Through ISAC’s sponsorship, IllinoisMentor at collegezone.com is available at no cost to all Illinois
students, high schools and colleges.
How does IllinoisMentor help these students?
• Beginning as early as eighth grade, students can use IllinoisMentor to research different careers that match their
particular interests and skills. Each career description on IllinoisMentor describes the level of education and the type of
degree that it may require, along with Illinois colleges that offer those majors or programs.
• Students have available a personal, electronic portfolio that allows them to keep track of all their personal data including
career exploration, high school coursework, extracurricular activities, demographic data, test scores, awards, etc.
Information stored in the student’s e-portfolio can be used to automatically populate FAFSA on the Web, a scholarship
search and IllinoisMentor online college admission applications.
• Students can measure their high school coursework against admission requirements for all MAP-approved Illinois
colleges and universities.
• Students can compare key attributes of all Illinois colleges such as enrollment, student/faculty ratio and school type.
They can also find a college by selecting attributes they want, such as major, geographic location, sports, ROTC, etc.,
and the system will display colleges that have those attributes. Students can search for colleges by entering a ZIP code
or an Illinois city. The system will return a list of colleges organized by those closest to the area entered.
• IllinoisMentor brings together all of the student financial aid information currently available in College Zone.
• Students can easily apply online to IllinoisMentor colleges. Also, they can request their high school transcripts be sent
to participating Illinois colleges.
Description of the effective practice: In December 2005, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC) unveiled an
addition to its Web site, collegezone.com. In addition to providing trusted, comprehensive information for students and
families on how to plan and pay for a college education, students now can research career options and complete skills
assessment tests that will help match their skills to possible careers. The IllinoisMentor online service, accessed through
collegezone.com, is aimed at students in eighth grade through high school and beyond and is a free tool for career and
college planning. Students can take virtual campus tours of Illinois colleges and universities, research colleges’ admission
requirements, complete online admission applications, and communicate directly with school counselors via e-mail.
How does this practice achieve sustainability? Student participation in IllinoisMentor will lead to an increased
population of high-need students pursuing a postsecondary degree, thereby providing economic benefits to the State of
Illinois in the form of a more educated, productive citizenry. ISAC plans to continue promotion of the IllinoisMentor
service in the upcoming year by launching a direct mail campaign to high school counselors and by continued
communication to counselors and students through College Zone’s e-Messaging service.
What are the results/measurable outcomes? Since the addition of IllinoisMentor to collegezone.com in December 2005,
more than 22,000 students at over 280 Illinois high schools have created IllinoisMentor accounts and more than 700 high
school guidance counselors have created an account in the IllinoisMentor Counselor Center. As of July 2006, ISAC had
secured 56 percent Illinois college participation in the Mentor System (these colleges agreed to participate in the online
application process through IllinoisMentor). Further, results from a satisfaction survey of Illinois postsecondary institutions
conducted during early summer 2006 showed that 88 percent of schools responding were aware that ISAC had recently
launched the IllinoisMentor online service, and approximately one-third of schools reported that they and/or their staff had
already referred students to IllinoisMentor.
Contact Information
Name: Rhonda Jachino
Email: rjachino@isac.org
Phone: (217) 782-7855
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