Nearly 90 percent of students who attend a top-ranked university earn a bachelor’s degree in four years. While these undergraduates may well be among the best and brightest, they also get kid-gloves treatment. If they run into trouble, an army of helpmates stands at the ready. “From moving day as a freshman through graduation and beyond,” Harvard assures its students, “our advisers are here to help and support you at every step.”

The situation is entirely different for most undergraduates, especially poor and minority students. All too often they’re steered to schools where they receive little if any support in mastering tough courses, decoding arcane requirements for a major, sorting out life problems or navigating the maze of institutional requirements. Graduation rates at these so-called dropout factories, especially those in urban areas that largely serve low-income, underprepared minority populations, are as abysmal as 5 percent.

Where a student goes makes all the difference. Consider a Chicago public high school graduate with a grade-point average of 3.5. If she enrolls at Chicago State University, a Washington Monthly investigation shows, the odds against her finishing are high — the school’s six-year graduation rate hovers at 20 percent. Her chances measurably improve if she attends the University of Illinois at Chicago, where the completion rate is 57 percent. And if she goes to Northwestern, just a few miles away, 93 percent of her classmates will graduate.

Six years ago, CUNY decided to confront the high dropout rate at its community colleges with the ASAP initiative. The results are stunning: 56 percent of the first two cohorts of more than 1,500 students have graduated, compared with just 23 percent of a comparable group that didn’t have the same experience. What’s more, most of those graduates are currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree.

The program for community-college students addresses money issues, which are typically students’ top concern, by covering tuition that’s not paid for by federal and state grants, as well as paying for public transit and giving students free use of textbooks, saving them upward of $900 a year. To help balance the demands of college with work, life and family obligations, students take their classes in a consolidated course schedule (morning, afternoon or evening).