Against All Odds, 98 Percent of This School’s Students are Heading to College

University of Pennsylvania. Wesleyan. Howard. These are some of the fine institutions that the 39 graduates from Girard College, a boarding school for at-risk students in Philadelphia, will be attending in the fall.
Accomplishing an amazing feat, nearly 100 percent of the teens that received diplomas from Girard College will attend school next fall. As blogger Brad Aronson (who attended Girard’s high school graduation last month) wrote, “Most of the students are from areas of Philadelphia where it’s assumed that they won’t go to college. They’re from neighborhoods where less than 60 percent of the kids graduate high school and only a small fraction of those continue their education.”
Founded in 1848, Girard College is an independent five-day-a-week boarding school for economically disadvantaged children grades 1-12. All Girard students receive a 100 percent scholarship for tuition, room and board — valued around $40,000 a year. To qualify, students must come from a home without one or both parents and qualify as “low-income.”
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According to The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, the school has graduated more than 20,000 orphans and children from financially needy families.
While this graduation rate sounds amazing to most of us (especially considering the circumstances), it turns out that it’s not particularly noteworthy that nearly every graduating senior from the class of 2014 is headed for higher education. The school boasts a college acceptance rate is nearly 100 percent. “In the last 10 years, 89 percent of Girard graduates attended a four-year college; 7 percent attended a two-year institution and 2 percent attended a vocational or technical school,” the educational institution reports on its website. In comparison, the average college-going rate of high school students for the state of Pennsylvania is only 61 percent.
Going to college is already a big achievement, but it’s also a means to break into the middle class. Aronson also described how moved he was after meeting the students’ families: “I met parents who hadn’t graduated high school. They were crying and cheering for their children who had achieved so much more. Children who had broken the cycle in their families and given future generations a new standard to aspire to.”
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Delaware Pushes to Get More Low-Income Students Enrolled in Higher Education

This fall, a new crop of college freshmen will unpack their belongings, hang up posters in their dorms rooms, and meet other bright young minds as they embark on a four-year journey of higher education.
There are, however, many other kids in the country who won’t get this opportunity, even though they have equivalent class ranks, scored just as well on the SAT, and got the same grades.
So what’s the difference between these kids and their collegiate counterparts? Unfortunately, these high-achievers have one major disadvantage: They come from low-income families.
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In fact, a large majority of high-achieving, low-income students don’t apply to selective colleges or universities — even when there are scholarships and financial aid for the taking.
When jobs reports consistently show that people with degrees have much higher employment rates and much bigger paychecks than people who do not, it’s imperative to get more of our nation’s youth to not just enroll in, but also to complete college.
One state, however, is showing remarkable progress with its simple, yet effective, measures to get these college-ready kids to enroll.
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As the New York Times reports, Delaware’s five-year-old Getting to Zero campaign has shown incredible results: Of the 1,800 college-ready high-school seniors the state has targeted, 98 percent are reportedly on track to enroll in at least one college. How?
Here are some of their approaches (in no particular order):
1. Many kids don’t apply to top colleges because applications are expensive, so Delaware completely waives them. The state’s Department of Education identifies all the high school seniors with an SAT score of at least 1,500 (out of 2,400) and specifically picks out the ones who are low-income. These students are then mailed application fee waivers to eight colleges.
2. Applications and FAFSA forms can be confusing or intimidating, so kids get some hand-holding. The state sends high-school guidance counselors and state officials to follow up with the aforementioned low-income/high-achieving students and their families to walk them through the applications via phone calls and meetings.
3. Offering the SAT and ACT during school. By simply by offering the exams during school hours, more students are taking it (and most Delaware students do). As the Times points out, you’d be surprised how many students don’t apply to college because they can’t be bothered to take the exam.
4. Encouraging students to apply to college during school. In November, Delaware high school seniors can use class time to fill out applications. Guidance counselors are not only on hand to help the students out, they also keep track of how many students have applied and to which school.
5. Celebrating college acceptance. College-bound students are publicly acknowledged for committing to higher education, thus creating an awareness among younger students who might not have considered going to college in the first place.
Star high schooler Sydney Nye told the Times that she’s only ever considered local colleges because applications were too expensive, especially coming from a working class family. But thanks to Getting to Zero’s initiatives, she’s now headed to Stanford — her dream school — on scholarship.
As Sydney said to the newspaper, “It worked out way better than I could have possibly anticipated.”
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Watch This Talented College Student Get the Financial Surprise of a Lifetime

You’ve probably heard that American college graduates are saddled with more student loans than ever before. Exactly how much debt, you may ask? According to the Project on Student Debt, the average borrower owes a whopping $29,400.
But as you can see in the touching video below, one talented junior from the University of Houston just got an incredible financial leg-up thanks to his head football coach, Tony Levine.
Levine decided to surprise rising star Kyle Bullard and his mother with the holy grail of college funding — a full scholarship — after the student’s successful walk-on season as a kicker for the U of H Cougars.
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The coach (who is known to be somewhat of a prankster) set up four hidden cameras in his office to film Bullard’s entire reaction. Levine starts off the conversation with a very serious talk about the limited number of scholarships and how Bullard didn’t seem like a good fit — until he surprises the football player and his mom with the amazing news.
According to the Houston Cougars site, the 5-foot-11-inch Boerne, Texas native had quite the run after taking over placekicking duties midway through last season. He finished with a perfect six-of-six on field goals and sixth on the team in scoring with 38 points.
This just goes to show you that hard work really does pay off, and no one is more delighted than Bullard’s mother. You can just see the financial black hole of college tuition being lifted off her shoulders. We have a feeling that this scholarship represents the dedication to excellence of them both.
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