The University of Colorado at Â鶹¹ÙÍø welcomes 40 students from the Denver metro area and New Mexico later this month for a four-day workshop entitled College Summit.
More than half the students will come from George Washington, North and West High Schools in Denver to the Â鶹¹ÙÍø campus June 24-27 to complete college admissions and financial aid applications.
During the four-day program faculty, staff and student assistants will run sessions aimed at helping students write their college essays, complete federal financial aid forms and gain a better understanding of what to expect in college.
College Summit is a non-profit organization based in Washington, D. C., which matches high schools, colleges and corporate sponsors -- in this case US West -- in a partnership designed to give low-income students a better chance of going to college.
CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø is the first public institution in Colorado to join in the partnership while more than a dozen other schools around the country are also hosting programs.
College Summit quotes 1996 U.S. Census figures showing that economically disadvantaged high school graduates are two-and-a-half-times less likely to enroll in college than their middle- and upper-class counterparts.
Since starting in 1993 the organization has run 25 programs for 695 students of whom 83 percent were from single-parent families. Half were African-American, 36 percent Latino, 10 percent American Indian, 2 percent Asian and 1 percent white.
Seventy-five percent of students participating in the program go on to enroll in college, compared with a national enrollment average of 34 percent among their peers.