College persistence was a foreign concept until I came to work at College Summit. I never heard the term during my college experience and I suspect that many of our own students haven’t either. To this day I wonder if knowing and understanding what this term implied would have changed my planning approach for…

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After completing graduate school and working as an admissions counselor at a neighboring university, I accepted a position as a guidance counselor in an urban school district. A few weeks into the school year, I was in love with the students, but I soon realized there was a barrage of ambiguity around the role of the school counselor.

When I graduated from college in 1999, I found myself inundated with the term consultant. I’d ask my friends and peers, “Hey, what are you doing after graduation?”, and regardless of who they were, or what they studied, I was overwhelmed by the response - “Oh, I will be ‘consulting’ with [fill-in-one-of-the-biggest-Houston-firms-here].” It was perplexing – what did that mean, ‘being’ a ‘consultant’?  Did we study anything that would make us good at that? I too, without really…

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In February and March, many of our College Summit partner schools are busy supporting students through the financial aid application process. But how can our schools support students who do not qualify for federal financial aid due to their status as undocumented immigrants?

This post is the second in a series of four to share best practices for College Summit implementation that any school can use to drive college-going culture.

Whenever we talk to young people about their worries about life after college, money (or lack thereof) invariably surfaces as a major concern. Informally, students tell us that they believe college is too expensive, or that they are worried…

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