USA Funds Promotes College Access for Low-Income Students in Arizona

USA Funds^® is providing funding to pilot College Summit Arizona, an initiative to enhance higher-education access for low-income students. USA Funds serves as the designated guarantor of federal education loans in Arizona.

College Summit, which currently operates in four states and the District of Columbia, provides a support system to bridge the gap between high-school graduation and postsecondary training for low-income high-school seniors who had not considered college. According to College Summit, each year nearly 200,000 high-school graduates who are capable of succeeding in college don't enroll. The organization says that this shortfall results from a lack of support for these students who have difficulty navigating the college-admissions process — from completing admissions forms, to drafting essays, to managing and meeting financial-aid deadlines.

Henry Fernandez, USA Funds' executive director of scholarships, outreach and philanthropy, coordinated a strategic partnership between College Summit and the Arizona Commission for Postsecondary Education. ACPE will serve as the collaborative “introducing” partner for the program in the state. College Summit 's successful approach to the college-access issue is congruent with the missions of USA Funds and ACPE — to expand access and increase success in postsecondary education.

College Summit works to bring together critical players in the college-access challenge, including the following:

• Students and parents. Through residential, four-day workshops, College Summit helps students with more college promise than their scores suggest believe in their future and prepare college-application materials that show their true strengths.
• High schools. Using its Senior-Year Curriculum, College Summit equips teachers to fill the “student-management role” that college-experienced parents routinely perform for children in higher-income communities.
• Colleges. With its Preview Portfolio Service, College Summit enables postsecondary schools to conduct whole-student reviews of low-income students early in the admissions process.

ACPE already is working with four school districts that will pilot College Summit's program in five Phoenix-area high schools: Glendale, MetroTech, Carl Hayden, Trevor Browne and Sun Valley, a charter school that targets high-school dropouts.

According to ACPE Executive Director April Osborn, counselors and teachers from the five schools have identified 40 seniors with grade-point averages of approximately 2.8 who are classified as “better than their scores.” These are “informal leaders and mid-tier students who have the potential to influence other mid-tier students.” They will participate in an intensive, residential workshop June 22-26 at Arizona State University .

ACPE also hosted a luncheon May 9 to launch the pilot program. Osborn plans to build on the momentum of the luncheon by encouraging community leaders to attend a June 25 College Summit Leadership Conference, where those in attendance will meet the seniors participating in the workshop.

“We are fortunate that we have great partners who want to see kids succeed as much as we do,” says Osborn.

College Summit students enroll in college at a rate of 79 percent — nearly double the national rate of 46 percent for high-school graduates from the same income level. Moreover, College Summit students stay in college at a rate of 80 percent.

These results were achieved with nearly 5,000 low-income students in rural and urban communities across the country, including those in California, Colorado, Illinois, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. More than 95 percent of College Summit students are African American, Latino, Native American or Asian American.