Harvard and Hamilton Create a 4+1 Collaboration

A couple of years ago, John McLaughlin, Ed.D.’14, vice president for enrollment and dean of admission at Hamilton College, had an idea: Since Hamilton was an undergraduate-only institution, it couldn’t offer students the option of adding a fifth year to get a master’s degree. But if Hamilton partnered with a handful of top-ranked graduate programs like the Ed School, he thought, it could help students seamlessly add that fifth year — before they even set foot on the Hamilton campus. 

McLaughlin’s idea eventually became the early assurance graduate pathway program, which launched this year and includes collaborations with graduate programs at Harvard, Duke, Vanderbilt, and others. The process starts when high school students are applying to Hamilton. Through the Common App, they indicate their interest in being considered for a particular “pathway” at a partner graduate school — the Ed School for education or Duke for business, for example. Accepted students (about 5–10 per partner each year) receive a welcome letter from Hamilton and an “early assurance” letter from the graduate school for their master’s. As long as students meet program requirements and benchmarks throughout their four years at Hamilton, they are recommended to the graduate school. The first group of students will begin at Hamilton in the fall of 2027.

Frank Arce, assistant dean for admission and financial aid at the Ed School, says this collaboration is a new, creative way for Harvard to expand their pipeline, especially at a time when the number of high school graduates peaked in 2025 and the looming “demographic cliff” shows a continued decline through at least 2041. But other factors also make this close collaboration with an undergraduate institution timely, he says.

“At the Ed School, we’ve noticed that more parents are getting invested a lot earlier in their young adults' higher education journeys and they like the idea that for their student, it’s an opportunity to finish their undergrad and then, instead of taking a gap year or taking a couple of years off, going straight into graduate education,” he says. “That's where this ‘four plus one’ idea comes into play.” 

McLaughlin acknowledges that the transition from undergraduate to “what’s next?” can be uncertain and stressful — for parents and students — but programs like early assurance help undergraduates better envision their future, which in turn eases anxiety. 

“Increasingly, there is recognition on the part of students and parents that the bachelor's degree is often not the end,” he says, “and so the idea of what follows, that can be a daunting proposition for students and families who have just navigated the already daunting process of getting into a great undergraduate college. There’s a dimension of uncertainty of what comes next, of what follows college.”

This could explain why, in part, Arce is seeing an increasing number of applicants to the Ed School coming straight from earning their bachelor’s degree.

“HGSE students are getting younger,” he says, “and this kind of collaboration is another opportunity for us to build that pipeline, but also, if we know applicants are already coming directly out of undergrad, be proactive with students earlier.” 

For Hamilton students in the early assurance program that leads to the Ed School, that means taking education courses while they are at Hamilton, creating a cohort with other students also in the Ed School pipeline, and having access to special programming and engagement activities on Appian Way. Some partnerships also include fee waivers, guaranteed interviews, and accelerated timelines.

McLaughlin says he’s excited to tie this new program back to the Ed School, “a place that is very near and dear to my heart.”

He says, “the idea of being able to come up with an academic innovation around a transitional moment in education between two layers of the educational system — undergraduate and graduate institutions — is really exciting from an academic standpoint, especially thinking about what this might look like and how this may shape students' experiences.”

From a professional standpoint, McLaughlin says “it’s exciting to consider how it may help support enrollment goals, both at the undergraduate and graduate level. And from a personal standpoint, the lessons that I learned in Gutman and Longfellow and up and down Appian Way I draw upon every day in the course of my work, uniting aspects of theory and scholarship and practice to try and make an impact in the work that I do. I'm so grateful that I'm able to continue to engage with HGSE in this way.”

Arce says he’s also grateful to be part of this partnership, not only because it creates a clearer pathway for Hamilton students who are already thinking about how they can make an impact in education, but because it amplifies something he and the Ed School hold sacred: access and opportunity. 

“How do we reach talented students earlier, help them see graduate education as possible, and remove some of the uncertainty around what comes next?” he says. “I’m excited to see what we learn from this partnership and how we can build similar opportunities with other institutions in the future.”