WHAT IS STRIVE?
Strive for College is an innovative college mentoring program that connects motivated, low-income high school students with undergraduate mentors, who guide them through the college application process and into enrollment at four-year universities and colleges, providing them with opportunities and resources to break the cycle of poverty forever.
FEATURED FACT
Every year, more than 200,000 low-income students graduate from high school in America ready to go to college – but do not.
Source Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, Empty Promises: The Myth of College Access in America, Washington, D.C., 2002

The Problem & Our Solution

The Problem

Every year, more than 200,000 low-income students graduate from high school in America ready to go to college – but do not. (1) Just 3 percent of students at the nation’s top 146 colleges are drawn from the lowest economic quartile, while the top half of the economic distribution contributes 90% of students at top colleges. Furthermore, while two-thirds of students from the top income quartile enroll in a four-year university, only one-fifth of students from the bottom quartile do so. (2)

Every year thousands of qualified, talented, motivated students from coast to coast are left behind simply because they lack resources and knowledge about the college admissions process or think they cannot pay for an expensive education. The simple truth is that economic status often prevents even the best low-income students from reaching their highest potential. In most school districts, counselors have neither the time nor the resources to work individually with each student and provide the one-on-one counseling and mentoring that helps under-served students believe in themselves and reach for opportunity. The result is the absence of a college-bound culture for disadvantaged students and low-income schools, and a perpetual cycle of low expectations.

This alarming trend is not specific to any one community or population - it affects students across the country, rural and urban, of all races and all backgrounds. Strive for College aims to address this on a national scale by connecting students with college educations - providing them with the tools they need to reach their dreams, find success, and break the cycle of poverty, while also expanding the country’s college-educated workforce and enabling talented minds to shine.

Our Solution

The Strive for College model is a student-to-student mentoring and college counseling program for low-income students that college undergraduates implement at their colleges and universities.

Objectives

Our program has two objectives:

  1. to provide disadvantaged and low-income high school students with the resources and relationships they need to find success in the admissions process and beyond
  2. to create meaningful service opportunities for university students in order to cultivate new leaders committed to serving others.

Vision

Strive for College is the first nationally replicable model for student-to-student college counseling that can be easily expanded to college and universities anywhere in the country.

We envision a nationwide network of chapters and student leaders dedicated to helping motivated low-income students reach college and find success, and dedicated to building strong college-bound cultures in the communities they serve.

1 Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, Empty Promises: The Myth of College Access in America, Washington, D.C., 2002.
2 Kahlenberg, Richard. America's Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education (New York, NY: The Century Foundation Press, 2004),