Some freshmen will find more than roommates, textbooks and course catalogues waiting for them at college this fall.

They'll also find a personal coach.

A 7-year-old San Francisco firm called InsideTrack has carved out a flourishing business providing executive-style coaching to college students throughout the country.

Created by the founders of SCORE Educational Centers, InsideTrack has coached more than 75,000 students at campuses including Northeastern University in Boston, Chapman University in Southern California and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

Its 130 coaches hold weekly sessions by phone or in person with their student clients. They offer encouragement when things seem tough; they help students manage their time and set priorities; they let them know about campus resources or share tips about how to approach a professor for help.

The company's revenue shot up from $7.9 million in 2005-06 to $12 million in 2006-07, a big enough jump to land it in Inc. magazine's forthcoming annual list of the 500 fastest-growing companies in America.

"We provide guidance, structure, positive reinforcement, accountability," said CEO Alan Tripp, who together with Kai Drekmeier founded both SCORE and InsideTrack. "Some people say college is a time to see if you can work by yourself without guidance. At InsideTrack, we don't see it that way. Most people benefit greatly from structure and positive reinforcement. But you get much more guidance and reinforcement (as a manager) at a company like General Electric than the average 18-year-old entering college."

InsideTrack has found an unusual niche. Although there are countless SAT tutors, private guidance counselors and other businesses aimed at helping kids get into college, there are relatively few for-profit enterprises geared to helping students once they are in college.

The company markets its services not to individual students and their families, but to college administrators who are looking for ways to increase the number of freshmen who ultimately graduate.

It's an area where many schools could use help. Only 57 percent of students at four-year colleges manage to graduate within six years, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

"The graduation figures haven't changed over time, but universities are paying a lot more attention to this because the federal and state governments are starting to tie funding into retention," said Alan Seidman, director of the Center for the Study of College Student Retention in New Hampshire.

Many students who fail to graduate drop out during or soon after their first year of college - the time period that InsideTrack has targeted for coaching.

Tripp said he came up with the idea by combining the positive reinforcement practices he'd seen at SCORE with the techniques of executive coaching.

The company typically charges colleges a fee of $800 to $1,400 per student for coaching.

Some schools have turned to InsideTrack for help with populations of working-class students who struggle to balance jobs and classes, and who are sometimes unprepared for the academic demands and cultural expectations of college.

"I worked with a single mother who, the first time I called her, was at the Boston Public Library trying to find scholarships," said Meaghan Joyce, InsideTrack's director for Northeastern University.

"She had no idea how to start. She had no idea how she would be paying for school. She had significant fears about going back to school based on her high school experience. Writing was a real fear for her, since she'd never really been taught it before."

Joyce helped connect the student with a financial aid adviser at the university. She also put her in touch with its writing center.

She encouraged her to take a required writing class during her first semester, when Joyce would be available for coaching support, rather than put it off until later. She helped her set weekly goals for completing course work and term papers.

That student completed her courses and re-enrolled for a second year.

"Probably the biggest take-away for her was having that time (during coaching sessions) to reflect on what needed to happen that week," Joyce said.

Some other schools have used InsideTrack to work with students taking online courses. The Academy of Art University started using InsideTrack for online students this summer and recently expanded its scope to regular students.

Jourdain McClure, 26, is a systems administrator in Roseville, near Sacramento, who was given a coach when he started taking online filmmaking classes at the Academy of Art.

"If you're not a self-disciplined person, online learning is probably the worst thing for you since you don't have to log in, and it's really easy not to," McClure said.

"That's where InsideTrack comes in. You have a success coach who's like an angel at your side, to support you and listen to you. I'm online - I don't see students. I don't physically have teachers. But no matter what, I can tell my coach how things are going. I'm very confident I'm not alone."

Some observers question whether InsideTrack's function could be filled less expensively by existing on-campus services such as counseling centers or academic advisers.

"There are many ways of going about these things," said Seidman, who was not familiar with the details of InsideTrack's program. "If I were the director of a (campus) counseling center, I'd say, 'Hey, we're here, we want students to take advantage of us. Maybe we need to get out a little more.' "

However, administrators at Chapman University in Orange County say their spending on InsideTrack has been clearly worthwhile.

Chapman started using InsideTrack in a pilot program in 2002. The college provided coaching to 120 freshmen, and identified a similar control group that did not receive coaching. More of the coached students made the dean's list and returned for their sophomore year; fewer of the coached students landed on academic probation or withdrew from a course.

"On every metric we identified - credits, grade point average and so on - the pilot group with coaching did better," said Saskia Knight, vice chancellor for enrollment management. "We feel the results are well worth the commitment."

One sign of the program's success came when Chapman gave students the option of continuing with coaching during their sophomore year - if students paid the cost of about $600 themselves.

Thirty-eight percent agreed to pay to continue the service.

"It was definitely helpful," said Mike Brown, 22, who graduated from Chapman in 2006 and used a coach during his freshman year.

"One-on-one meetings are a kind of rare thing to have. It's different from everyone going into an auditorium and listening to someone tell 1,000 people how to write things down in a planner."

Brown, who now runs an online auto parts business that he started during college, credits coaching with helping him graduate in three years, rather than four.

"Every week I went in and made an action plan," he said. "I'd take that plan and put it in the front of my folder for school. Without coaching, I would have been semi-organized but not as organized as I was. To this day, I still use the three-month planning worksheets I got from my coach. The skills and planning strategies transferred over to the rest of
my life."