To College and Beyond!

Remember the college trip your parents took you on to see the colleges to which you had worked SO hard to earn the opportunity to apply? My students' parents do not have the means and will not take them on that same trip. They also deserve to see the best schools in the country.

In Chicago, 40% of Hispanic students graduate from high school. My students (98% Hispanic and 98% Low Income) are defying all odds and 100% will graduate from high school. In Chicago, the average ACT score is a 16 out of 36. My students are achieving "college ready" levels by averaging a 22, the highest out of all non-selective public high schools. However, we do not have the funds to send the highest achieving of these students to visit the best colleges in the country. Instead our students do hours of research in our computer labs and cross their fingers that they will be the lucky few that are chosen by a college to fly out and visit. These students deserve the same opportunities to visit colleges and get excited about their future as their white, wealthier counter-parts who are taken on spring break college trips with their families. My kids BELIEVE it. They deserve to SEE it.

With these resources, we will be able to pack a fifteen passenger van and haul 13 eager sophomores and juniors to see the greatest universities in our country. These resources will allow us to rent the van, purchase the gas, and stay in two hotels on Oberlin's campus and MIT's campus while we travel between Columbia University, New York University, Harvard, MIT, Oberlin, University of Pennsylvania, Wesleyan, Yale and Princeton. This trip will show the students the fruits of their labor - the successes they will earn when they continue to work their tails off for another one or two years. These are our highest achieving sophomores and juniors that deserve to see how all this hard work will pay off. In non-selective Chicago Public Schools, juniors average a 16 on the ACT. The sophomores and juniors that we will take on their trip of a lifetime average a 23 (as sophomores!) They deserve the same rewards that students are given for the same greatness in the Chicago private schools. Here, 85% of our country graduates from high school. Unfortunately, only 40% of Hispanics do. In the US, only 13% of Hispanics achieve a college degree by the age of 25. My students are changing those statistics and their world. They have dedicated themselves to achieving the scores and developing the character needed to earn admission into the top universities in the country. It is only in letting them experience this world of academia that will allow them to change their communities. 

For more information on Pritzker College Prep please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNoRXET4b30. Thank you for all your contributions!