Mathematica served as the measurement and evaluation partner for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Student Segmentation Initiative. Under this initiative, a group of colleges piloted a tool—developed by the strategy firm Marakon—that identified students’ internal and external strengths and barriers to success and segmented them based on these. By classifying individual students according to the segments, the tool provided a low-cost, easy-to-use instrument to help college administrators better target interventions to address student needs.

Mathematica worked with the foundation, Marakon, and college stakeholders to provide assistance to conceptualize and prioritize learning goals, support program implementation at the colleges, and inform programmatic and evaluation design decisions. Key deliverables included a targeted literature review on college student noncognitive attributes and typologies and a memo summarizing cross-cutting findings from the colleges and a standardized profile of each colleges’ planned program approach.