About one and four college students are both first generation and from low-income backgrounds,

making the path to a college degree especially challenging.

At Boston College's Messina College, a new two-year, fully-residential associate's degree program,

a wide range of support is helping change that.

John Yang visited the Brookline, Massachusetts campus to learn more

as part of our ongoing series Rethinking College. For a second year Messina College student,

Lucentia Robertson, who goes by Lou, time with her mother, Evelyn, and her older brother,

Lukens, is the perfect way to celebrate the end of midterm exams. While she misses home and her older brother, Lukens, is the perfect way to celebrate the end of midterm exams.

While she misses home and her close-knit family, she says she felt comfortable the very first

time she set foot on this campus when she was a high school senior.

I came home to my mom, and I was like, mom, like, this is where I want to be. This is where I feel like I belong.

And having seen her mother deal with health issues, she knew what she wanted to do, study

to become a nurse.

That motivated me to want to be in the health care because I want others to know that

they're not alone in the hospital. Messascena is the two-year associate degree program of Boston College,

a nationally ranked private liberal arts school.

If students finish Messina with a 3.4 grade point average or better,

they're guaranteed a spot in BC's bachelor's degree program.

Messina enrolled its first class in 2024 and 96 percent returned this year.

Messina College is tailored for low-income and first-generation students.

The very students, research shows, who are least likely to finish college.

The big reason for that is lack of familiarity with the unwritten rules of college life.

...