Causes: Education, Student Services

Mission: Our current education system is ill designed to ensure that all young people who are college-ready make it to college: each year an estimated 200,000 low-income youth graduate from high school, capable of success in college, yet do not enroll. Though the barriers preventing these youth from accessing higher education guidance, resources, support are surmountable, the consequences for not fixing the system are intensifying: -Every 23 seconds, a student drops out of a public high school?adding up to 1.1 million students per year. -Only one in three low-income high school students enrolls in college. -For the first time since the late 1800s, America no longer has the world's highest rate of young students going on to a postsecondary institution. When compared with other industrialized nations, the United States now ranks only 13th in the percentage of the population that enters and completes college.

Programs: For more than a decade, College Summit has been equipping high schools/school districts nationwide with a college-access model that has helped 35,000 students become college-bound during their senior year; students who would not otherwise have been identified or supported as college-capable. Data collected over the last two years show that College Summit high schools are raising school-wide college enrollment rates by more than 15 percent over their own baselines while the college enrollment rate for low-income students nationwide has increased by only 4 percent. In 2008-09, we expect to serve a record 17,000 high school seniors, in 13 states, approximately 40 school districts and over 200 high schools.