Summer melt is a national phenomenon that occurs when high school graduates who intend to matriculate into higher education following graduation end up not doing so. This phenomenon is widespread across the country and enables the poverty cycle to continue. Over the last decade, national studies conducted to understand the summer melt phenomenon have identified three factors that create barriers to matriculation for high school graduates who succumb to summer melt: financial, paperwork, and home circumstances. The purpose of this phenomenological case study is to describe the experience or transition for a group of low-income graduates of a single school district in Southwest Ohio, all who intended to matriculate into higher education. A sufficient number of matriculated and non-matriculated graduates were recruited to identify factors that contributed to the summer melt phenomenon among a small group of graduates who did not matriculate, and to describe how another small group of matriculated graduates overcame similar factors. Factors identified were compared to factors previously reported by national studies of the summer melt phenomenon. Emergent factors not previously identified were also reported, as well as factors matriculated graduates reported assisted in their successful transition from high school to higher education. Due to the small sample size, results cannot be taken as representative of all graduates of this school district, but may serve as a starting point for conducting future studies on the summer melt phenomenon.