DeKALB | With over 2,500 applicants and only 500 available spots, NIU’s CHANCE Program applicants face a tough selection process.

The CHANCE — Counseling, Help and Assistance Necessary for a College Education — Program was started at NIU in 1968 to provide assistance to those hopeful students whose admissions applications do not meet the traditional criteria — a 19 on the ACT test and a 2.75 out of 4.00 GPA. CHANCE is only open to students applying as freshmen.

“It can be called an alternative admissions program, but that is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Colette Maher, one of the 10 CHANCE counselors.

The CHANCE program originally was created to bring more diversity onto NIU’s campus, but the program has since changed.

“Now a good portion of the applicants are white students, not just black and Hispanic,” Mitchell said.

All admitted students take UNIV 101 with their assigned counselors and work with their counselors throughout the year, meeting with them at least once a month.

“Some students come in much more often and we build lasting relationships with them,” Maher said.

The CHANCE program is not all success, though. Mitchell said that only 30 to 33 percent of the students who apply through CHANCE typically graduate.

CHANCE can be compared with other university-based aid programs, but CHANCE director Leroy Mitchell said one of the reasons it’s different is because it doesn’t rely on federal funding.

“What is unique about CHANCE is that all of the money comes from the institution, not federal grants,” Mitchell said.

The funding is what makes it hard for the program to accommodate more than 500 students, and Mitchell said he owes a lot of CHANCE’s success in the past few years to NIU President John Peters.

“The phone calls come in from parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles [of applicants] saying, ‘I was in the CHANCE program…’ but we just cannot accept everybody who applies,” Mitchell said.