College Possible Milwaukee has been awarded a grant of $75,000 from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. The grant will support College Possible’s college preparation and readiness programming in Milwaukee high schools, allowing the Milwaukee nonprofit to continue to serve low-income students on their paths to and through college and to strengthen education in Milwaukee.
“We are grateful for the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s continued support of our program,” says Edie Turnbull, College Possible Milwaukee’s Executive Director. “Thanks to this investment, we are able to help more low-income Milwaukee students earn not just admission to college, but college degrees.”
Launched in Milwaukee in 2008, College Possible currently serves over 600 high school students at 10 partner high schools in Milwaukee and more than 800 college students at colleges nationwide. The program provides guidance to students throughout their junior and senior years of high school and continues to support them until their graduation from college.
College Possible Milwaukee high school juniors took their first official ACT on April 12. Over the course of the school year, these students have taken four practice ACT tests and completed ACT preparation after-school sessions twice weekly. Last year, College Possible Milwaukee juniors increased their ACT scores by an average of over 19 percent. These improved test scores give students greater opportunity to earn admission to four-year colleges.
The Greater Milwaukee Foundation is a family of more than 1,100 individual charitable funds, each created by donors to serve the charitable causes of their choice. Grants from these funds serve people throughout Milwaukee, Waukesha and Washington counties and beyond. Started in 1915, the Foundation is one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the world.
College Possible also received attention in November when Harvard University released historic results from a study using randomized controls, considered to be the gold standard of evaluation. The findings show that College Possible’s approach to unlocking the potential of low-income students is effective and that students served are significantly more likely to enroll in four-year colleges.
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