Education United States Project #5482

Quality SAT Prep for 600 Low-Income HS Students

by SEE College Prep

Project Report | Jun 25, 2012
Thank you for the difference you have made! (final Global Giving report)

By Garrett Neiman | CEO and Founder, CollegeSpring

A few of our first academic-year students!

Dear friend,

A while ago, you made a donation to SEE College Prep (now named CollegeSpring) through the Global Giving website.

I am emailing to let you know what a difference your support has made.

Our work started with a simple realization: low-income high school students tend to score much lower on the SAT than their peers, making their dreams of attending four-year colleges and universities much harder to realize. For many students, improving SAT scores significantly could mean the difference between a high school diploma and a Bachelor’s Degree.

Because donors like you believed in our work, CollegeSpring has helped approximately 2,100 students in the Bay Area and Los Angeles understand the college admissions process and raise their SAT scores by an average of almost 200 points. In 2012-2013, we will serve approximately 2,500 students through both summer and school-year programs. Your support and encouragement in the early phases of our work helped us to grow from a completely volunteer-based project to a sustainable non-profit with a permanent full-time staff of 9, allowing us to increase dramatically the number of students we reach.

Because we are no longer receiving donations through Global Giving, you will no longer receive CollegeSpring updates unless you opt-in to our mailing list. If you aren't already on our mailing list, we hope you will opt-in now in order to remain connected to us!

We are also active on social media, and encourage you to like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to stay more abreast of the work we are doing to help students realize their potential.

Again, we thank you for your support, and the difference you've made in the lives of the students we've served.

Yours in service,

Garrett Neiman, CEO and Founder

Mentors work with small groups of 3 to 5 students.

Professional teachers deliver general content.

Mentors review material with students.

Mentors are role models of college success.

CollegeSpring has served 2,100 students!

Links:

Permalink

Oct 25, 2011
SEE College Prep Scores Summer Successes!

By Sean Simplicio | Vice President, Development and Operations

Dear Friends of SEE College Prep,

Thank you so much for helping low-income high school students access the colleges and futures that they deserve. We are happy to share with you that thanks to your support, nearly 600 students at our 16 summer program sites improved their SAT scores and gained the tools they need to successfully apply to college. This summer:

Students in our programs improved their SAT scores by an average of 194 points.
The number of our students scoring above the national median on the SAT doubled.
93% of our students felt more confident about taking the SAT as a result of our program.
85% of our students felt that their SEE mentor was the best mentor they'd ever had.

We are also happy to announce the recent launch of our first school-year programs, in collaboration with two charter management organizations in Los Angeles, Alliance College-Ready High Schools and Green Dot Public Schools. Already this school year, 800 students in six schools are benefiting from our programs. Here are two reasons why we are excited about our school-year programs:

Providing programs during the school year allows us to partner with schools who cannot afford or are otherwise unable to offer summer programs.
By offering our curriculum during the school day, we are able to reach the entire Junior class at each school. This allows us to serve more students and improves our ability to track student outcomes.

In order to provide high-quality services to as many students as possible, we will continue to offer both summer and school year programs, and will actively work to expand our reach.

If you or anyone you know is interested in making a difference by joining our team (either as an undergraduate mentor or as a full-time staff member), please see our website for a list of current openings.

Thank you for your continued interest and support!

All the best,

Sean

Links:

Jobs at SEE College Prep

Permalink

Jul 26, 2011
2011 Mid-Summer Update

By Sean Simplicio | Vice President, Business Development

Dear Friend of SEE College Prep,

Summer of 2011 has been very busy! We're very happy to give you an update about our progress serving low-income California high school students with SAT preparation and college counseling content.

Our summer programs are nearing conclusion. All sixteen of the schools we are serving have reacted positively to our program, and the results so far are quite promising. While it's too early to tell with certainty where all students will end up, with three of the four diagnostic tests completed nearly all students are showing positive improvement. We're hopeful that we'll beat our prior achievement of 200 point average increases!
We are preparing in full force for our first school-year programs, and are excited by their efficiency and scale. Through Alliance for College Ready Public Schools and Green Dot in Los Angeles, we will serve at least 600 students at six high schools beginning next month! We will train nearly forty teachers in early August for programs that launch in late August and early September. After the program starts, we will begin recruiting undergraduates who will join the program in January as mentors to the students, much like in our summer programs.
Our June 15 online campaign via Global Giving raised over $10,000 in just 24 hours—thank you to those who played a role in this effort! We've also secured generous funding in the past month from two foundations and several major donors to help us end our year strongly.
We are also very excited to welcome a new Board Member to our leadership. Rick Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He has been a leader in the development of economic analysis of educational issues, and his work on efficiency, resource usage, and economic outcomes of schools has frequently entered into the design of both national and international educational policy. Rick’s wealth of knowledge concerning charter schools and teacher quality, and prominence in the research of these fields, will contribute greatly to our efforts to reach more students and offer high-quality services to all participants. Rick’s illustrious academic career will bolster our organization’s efforts to deliver a program that is backed by data and the latest research. Welcome, Rick!
We've also just welcomed a new staff member, Krystal O'Leary Flores, to our team as our Los Angeles Programs Manager; in this role she'll be responsible for ensuring our LA-based work goes well, including recruiting and managing excellent teachers and mentors to serve our students. Krystal has a career as a professional educator, and was most recently a Lead Teacher and Program Coordinator in the Media Academy at Crenshaw High School in LA. Welcome Krystal!

Thank you for your interest in our organization and your continued support!

Best,

Sean

Permalink

1 2 3 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.