Gates Millennium Scholars Longitudinal Outcomes

Black businesswoman working in the office

Challenge

A contemporary evaluation of the Gates Millennium Scholars program was needed to understand its long-term impact.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation established the Gates Millennium Scholars (GMS) program in 1999 to provide high-achieving students of color with significant financial need the opportunity to attend and complete college. By 2025, individuals who applied to the program during its first eight years had entered or were well into middle adulthood with established careers and life course outcomes. To understand the program’s long-term impact, the Gates Foundation engaged NORC to conduct a comprehensive study comparing educational and life course outcomes of GMS Recipients and qualified applicants who were not awarded the scholarship (GMS Non-Recipients). The existence of a comparison group enabled assessment of GMS effects relative to a similar group of high-achieving underrepresented students of color.

Solution

NORC conducted innovative longitudinal analysis spanning more than 25 years using multiple secondary data sources.

With a Gates Foundation grant, NORC leveraged historical data from its 2002-2012 longitudinal evaluation study and integrated contemporary secondary data to analyze outcomes for 16,129 individuals across five scholarship cohorts (Cohorts 1, 2, 3, 5, and 9). The team successfully located 91.5% of sample members and obtained data from LexisNexis, the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, Merkle, the National Student Clearinghouse, and Catalist.

NORC’s comprehensive methodology examined:

Educational trajectories: Undergraduate and graduate enrollment, institution type and selectivity, college transfers, persistence, degree completion, time to degree, and fields of study including STEM majors
Financial outcomes: Household income, net worth, home equity, and neighborhood economic characteristics
Civic engagement: Voter registration and participation in federal elections

The study employed advanced statistical techniques including Coarsened Exact Matching to generate comparable groups and conducted extensive subgroup analyses by gender, race/ethnicity, parental education, and pre-college academic performance.

Result

NORC’s findings demonstrated the transformative impact of the GMS program, with scholarship recipients outperforming peers despite greater baseline disadvantages.

This study revealed that GMS Recipients achieved superior outcomes across multiple measures, despite coming from families and neighborhoods with fewer resources. Key findings include:

Educational Excellence:

78.8% of GMS Recipients earned bachelor’s degrees in six years or less compared to 77.1% of GMS Non-Recipients—dramatically exceeding the 58.3% six-year graduation rate for the general U.S. population.
64.6% graduated within four years versus 62.2% of GMS Non-Recipients and 37.6% of the general population.
45.8% earned master’s degrees (502 additional degrees) compared to 38.2% of GMS Non-Recipients.
20.9% earned doctoral degrees (204 additional degrees) compared to 17.9% of GMS Non-Recipients.
GMS Recipients were more likely to major in STEM fields (34.8% vs. 32.7%).

Institutional Access:

26.7% of GMS Recipients attended Ivy League or other elite institutions compared to 21.6% of non-recipients.
Recipients attended schools with higher average costs ($10,621 vs. $9,323), indicating access to better-resourced institutions.

Exceptional Impact for Underrepresented Groups:

African American GMS Recipients graduated within four years at a rate of 68.1%—more than three times the 20.9% rate for African Americans in the U.S. general population.
Female GMS Recipients showed particularly strong gains in master’s (48.2% vs. 40.8%) and doctoral (21.6% vs. 17.5%) degree attainment.
The scholarship demonstrated greatest impact for students with lower baseline academic performance and those whose parents had high school education or some college.

Economic and Civic Outcomes:

Home equity advantages emerged for GMS Recipients in later cohorts.
Recipients demonstrated comparable or higher rates of civic engagement through voter participation.

Methodological Innovation:
NORC’s use of Coarsened Exact Matching strengthened causal inference, with matched analyses confirming and often amplifying the descriptive findings. After locating contemporary contacting information for 91.5% of sample, the study successfully obtained secondary data for 42-98% of the sample across various sources, demonstrating NORC’s expertise in complex data integration.

Strategic Recommendations:
The study identified four key areas for future investigation to maximize program impact: career pathways and influential factors, economic mobility trajectories, cohort-specific implementation insights, and leadership development outcomes. These recommendations position the Gates Foundation to build on the GMS program’s demonstrated success.