By Bill DeBaun, Senior Director, Data and Strategic Iniativies
Reading time: Five minutes
The National College Attainment Network (NCAN) is featuring Dr. Savitz-Romer's work in a series titled, "A Developmental Approach to College Access and Success," consisting of webinars, blog posts, and peer exchanges. The author is grateful to Dr. Savitz-Romer for her feedback on this article.
In her last blog, Dr. Mandy Savitz-Romer explored the concept of “college-going identities,” sometimes known as “future-oriented identities.” Students’ understanding of who they are and who they might
grow to be is a key developmental task for young people. The process of identity development helps young people make sense of the world and their place in it. It’s foundational to the choices they make, the goals they set, and the pathways they will
pursue.
College-going identities aren’t indelible, and students aren’t born with them. Students develop their identities, which again shape among other things whether they will pursue education after high school, over time. All kinds of things shape these identities,
e.g., their experiences, relationships, and own self-reflection. As Dr. Savitz-Romer wrote in this series, “A college-going identity is a dimension of a students’ identity in which they believe that college is right for them, see themselves as “college
material”, and aspire to obtain a college degree.”
If you take anything away from this post, you should remember that students’ identities don’t develop in a linear fashion.
Students’ identities don’t develop in a linear fashion. If you take anything away from this post, you should remember that so I’m typing it again: students’ identities don’t develop in a linear fashion. The progression toward or away from a college-going
identity may appear to outsiders to be random, capricious, winding, roundabout, and inefficient. The progression for some students may very well resemble The Desert Rose Band’s classic country lyrics, “one step forward, two steps back.” (Of course,
some students do progress toward a college-going identity in a linear fashion.)
We Can Categorize Students’ Identity Stages
In their book, Ready, Willing, and Able, Dr. Savitz-Romer and co-author Suzanne Bouffard draw connections between students’ formation of college-going identities and
psychologist
James Marcia’s four identity statuses.[i] This model, which grew out of the identity stage of Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, describes four “statuses” that indicate the degree to which a person has explored and committed to a particular element of identity (these definitions
appear in Ready, Willing, and Able).
Identity diffused: This student has little awareness of future postsecondary options and mostly feels overwhelmed by the process.
Foreclosure: This student has ruled out going to college without seeking or receiving appropriate information.
Moratorium: This student is trying on the possibility of going to college but has not yet made a full commitment.
Identity achieved: This student has talked with teachers, counselors, family, and/or peers and sees herself as firmly on the path to college.
Promoting a college-going identity is especially important when youth engage in behaviors that seem inconsistent with college-going. Again, because identity formation is not linear, students will likely “try on” different identities to see how they “fit.” Students may move between the different statuses above, even repeatedly. Savitz-Romer and Bouffard suggest that educators, advisors, or anyone who wants to support students’ college-going identity development, needs to help students form a coherent, integrated identity that considers the many parts of what makes them unique.
How Can Advisors Keep Identity Statuses In Mind?
The trusted adults in students’ lives (e.g., postsecondary advisors, counselors, and practitioners) don’t need to try to rush students to the “achieved” status. Facilitating students’ consideration and exploration of these identities should be the goal. Students may cycle through these statuses more than once as their experiences shift and deepen. If students appear to be in moratorium but move back toward foreclosure, consider it part of the process.
A developmental approach to postsecondary advising, as described by Dr. Savitz-Romer, embraces this nonlinearity. The approach recognizes that a student's readiness for college isn't just academic; it’s emotional, psychological, and identity-driven. When we ask, “Why doesn’t this student seem motivated?” or “Why aren’t they completing key milestones?” the answer may lie in where they are in their identity development.
To best support students, practitioners can:
Offer safe opportunities for students to “try on” college-going behaviors and identities.
Normalize uncertainty and exploration as part of the process.
Actively counter narratives that college is “not for you.”
Help students integrate their personal identities—culture, community, values—with their academic aspirations.
How Can Programs and Schools Capture Identity Formation?
Beyond individual advisors, systems like schools and college access programs can also account for these statuses by incorporating them into their curricula, data collections, CRM systems, or advising platforms.
While these statuses aren’t static (and shouldn’t be treated as such), capturing a student's current identity stage—diffused, foreclosed, moratorium, or achieved—could help practitioners tailor their outreach and support.
Imagine a system that prompts an advisor when a student marked as “diffused” hasn’t yet received exploratory planning resources or when a student in “moratorium” may benefit from a small group session with peers who recently made the leap to “identity achieved.” Over time, these insights can help practitioners observe trends, spot disengagement earlier, and strengthen interventions that build a durable college-going identity. It can also provide a more holistic view of a student’s readiness—beyond GPA and checklists—grounded in a developmental approach to college access.
Keeping in mind that a student’s identity status at any one time can be shifting, if a program is going to capture a student’s identity in a data set, that data point should be considered a message written in sand, not stone. By design, this is a field that would bear regular updates based on trusted adults’ interactions with the student. Timestamps on the most recent update and notes on what prompted the categorization would be valuable here. Lastly, periodically revisiting and revising students’ identity statuses, especially at key transition points like junior year planning, FAFSA completion, or college decision season, would be sensible.
Ultimately, helping students see themselves as college-goers is not just about providing information. It’s about creating the conditions for identity development to flourish. Marcia’s four statuses offer the college access field a more nuanced way to describe a student’s journey toward a college-going identity.
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