Strive for College

Please note that this opportunity is only for companies. Employers pay a fee to support the program, and their employees become mentors to aspiring college students.

In his junior year of high school, Michael Carter transferred from a private school to a public school. At the private school, most students had been preparing for college. At the public school, his friends with solid grades weren’t preparing for college, because they assumed they couldn’t afford to go. Michael wanted to do something about the college enrollment disparity, so when he entered Washington University, he started a pilot program in which he and fellow students provided a year of college-prep mentoring to low-income students at a local high school. The school’s college acceptance rate improved by over 85 percent, and Strive for College was born.

Strive for College connects aspiring college students from low-income families with free one-on-one online mentoring through the entire college admissions and financial aid application processes. Mentors must have or be working toward a college degree and commit to one hour a month.