NEW YORK – What started as a group of high school students who stopped by for pizza and soft drinks at a monthly meeting with mentors from the Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young has turned into a cohort of polished college-bound seniors.
On Tuesday, 10 students from Adlai Stevenson High School in the Bronx celebrated their achievements at a reception in Manhattan as the first cohort of the College Mentoring for Access and Persistence (MAP) program, a partnership between Ernst & Young and the nonprofit College for Every Student.
“We can talk about No Child Left Behind, we can talk about Race to the Top, but we don’t have a program that’s working—except here with Ernst & Young,” said Rick Dalton, executive director of College for Every Student.
All 10 will be attending college next fall, but only eight have made up their minds about where they’ll be going.
“Before I probably wouldn’t have even thought about college like that. They helped with the SAT prep—they helped with books, which I wouldn’t have bought,” said Anthony Brothers, who now plans to study civil engineering at the New York City College of Technology.
He added that the financial boost that College MAP has given him—paying for college application fees and SAT prep materials—was a huge help.
“I didn’t know where I was going to get the money from for that,” Brothers said.
But it takes a lot more than money to get students from low-income neighborhoods on the college track, said David Sewell, College MAP program manager at Ernst & Young.
“It’s a group mentor program,” he said. “At any given point we have 10 official mentors. That’s why the group mentor program works.”
While the company’s one-on-one mentoring program at high schools offers a more holistic approach, the College MAP program is run by a group of staffers who switch off attending mentoring sessions and focus on getting the kids to college. From college visits, to SAT prep sessions, to working on admissions essays, to filling out federal financial aid forms together, it’s about guiding students through the arduous admissions process.
