TEENSHARP
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Mission Statement
We prepare Black, Latino, and low-income students to attend and thrive at America's top colleges. Our vision is that, one day, the diversity of those who occupy the nation’s most influential leadership positions and highly-skilled jobs will reflect the nation’s rich diversity.
About This Cause
Founded in 2009, TeenSHARP provides hundreds of Black, Latino, and low-income students across the Delaware Valley region with a caliber of college advising that's typically reserved for private school settings, or through pricy consultants. We have three core programs—Striver, G2C Academy, and Cyber SPARK—which combine expert advising with rigorous instruction; culturally-affirming leadership development; socio-emotional supports; access to a diverse community of peers; and more. We also provide parent supports in English and Spanish. Since our founding, TeenSHARP has grown from 10 students to about 400 enrolled today, and 400 total graduates. Our goal is to send another 2,025 students through our program by 2025. To see what our work can do, please take five minutes to watch this moving video from our Class of 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an8wdI8-RQk When students join our program, TeenSHARP looks beyond GPA and test scores—assessing instead for qualities like intellectual curiosity, coachability, and resilience. These are essential, because TeenSHARP has intense requirements. For instance, our students attend a full day of classes every Saturday during the school year, and six weeks of advanced math tutoring in the summertime. The results are powerful. All TeenSHARP graduates go on to attend and graduate from four-year colleges. (A small percentage of students have taken six years to complete college.) Nine in 10 TeenSHARP students are admitted to at least one of America’s top colleges, based on Barron's rankings. On average, TeenSHARP students from low-income households accumulate $8,000 in debt over four years of college. The number is less than $15,000 for all TeenSHARP students. More than half of our students develop a track record of equity-centered leadership and real impact on their communities. Our alums launch nonprofits, take jobs at Fortune 500 companies, collaborate with lawmakers, and sit on boards. In this way, TeenSHARP is more than a college access program. We’re a leadership incubator for students of color and low-income students, uplifting them within a system that wasn’t designed for their success. When the pandemic struck, disparities in the system became even more dire—and our work, even more important. So TeenSHARP doubled down. Within a matter of days, we made all programs virtual. We created two new programs, Orchestrate and Cyber SPARK, to keep our students learning while schools weren’t teaching new content. We offered weekly workshops for parents on Wednesdays in English and Thursdays in Spanish to help them navigate education during a pandemic. Unburdened by matters of geography, we began to see and leverage connections new connections to enrich our programs, for instance a partnership with The Philadelphia Freedom Schools. We even had our first cyber college tour that featured conversations with two women of color college presidents. Ultimately we have served far more students than before, setting records in terms of G2C attendance, college admissions outcomes, financial aid award totals, and organizational fundraising. Among the 89 students in our senior class, everyone accepted a spot at a four-year college. Thirty students were accepted to top colleges during the Early Decision round, with an average of $70,000 in annual gift aid (grants and scholarship) and only $2,000 in annual student loans. During Regular Decision, one of our scholars was accepted to all twenty of the schools he applied to, including four Ivy League schools. Six students were admitted to Cornell.