GUIDING PRINCIPLES

High-achieving, low-income students need support to ensure that they thrive in school and beyond. Based on more than a decade of experience, we understand what such students need in order to realize their academic potential.

Research shows:

• There is a profound and widening excellence gap through elementary and secondary school.
• High-achieving, low-income students are less likely to pursue rigorous coursework or to score highly on achievement tests.
• High-achieving, low-income students are less likely to apply to or enroll in highly competitive colleges and less likely to complete college than their low achieving, high-income peers.
• High-achieving, low-income students often exist in isolation.

As a result, high-achieving, low-income students need:

• to be academically challenged and inspired during school, after school, and in the summers.
• information about how to successfully navigate transitions to high school and college and prepare for, identify, and apply to competitive colleges.
• financial resources that enable them to develop their academic and artistic talents.
• a peer community that challenges, supports, and inspires them.

Therefore, we

• challenge and inspire by
  • ensuring that our students have access to rigorous curricula in their school and college and engage in meaningful, high- quality educational experiences.
  • ensuring, through grants, that high-achieving, low-income students throughout the country have access to meaningful, high-quality educational experiences.
• provide information by
  • counseling and guiding our students about how to apply for, select, pay for, and navigate a college that is the best fit.
  • supporting organizations and institutions through grants that advise students about how to apply for, select, and pay for a college that is the best fit.
• provide financial resources by
  • providing among the most generous scholarships in the nation for students in high school, college, and graduate school.
  • providing grants to organizations so that high-achieving, low-income students can participate in high-quality summer and arts programming.
• provide a peer community by
  • connecting our students to one another through in-person events, mentoring opportunities, and online communities.