The idea for CollegeBound started in 1988 with a city-wide challenge. Baltimore’s labor market was changing rapidly, and the city needed an increasingly college-educated workforce. Business and community leaders quickly joined together and responded, including the Greater Baltimore Committee (GBC), Baltimoreans United In Leadership Development (B.U.I.L.D) and then-Mayor Kurt Schmoke. They looked at the city’s public schools and saw dedicated teachers, counselors and administrators. But they also saw students who–despite everyone’s efforts–were not getting the resources they needed to reach college. Structural gaps existed in three specific areas: college advising in the public high schools, lack of accessible scholarship money, and “Last Dollar Grant” gap funding which makes up the difference between financial aid and what a student’s family can afford. To address these three specific gaps, our founders created the CollegeBound Foundation.

CollegeBound started small, but the vision was always grand. Today, almost 40 years later, CollegeBound has helped tens of thousands of low-income and first-generation Baltimore City students realize their dreams of a college education. CollegeBound now employs full-time College Access Program Specialists, or CAPS, in the Baltimore City Public middle schools, high schools, and community-based organizations. CAPS create dedicated college centers within their schools and organizations and work year-round to assist students with the college application process. We actively advise 50% of Baltimore City Schools’ juniors and seniors and 25% of Baltimore City Schools’ graduates attending a 4-year college on a Pell Grant. CollegeBound awards $4 million annually in scholarships for Baltimore City Schools graduates.

CollegeBound also has through-college programming with our College Completion Program. The College Completion Program, created 9 years ago, provides in-college advising to students to see them through to graduation. Most of the students in the program are first-generation. Our College Completion Program students’ 6-year graduation rate from 4-year colleges is 71%. Advisors work alongside our Department of Strategic Partnerships to help our students secure paid summer internships and jobs after graduation. We believe in the transformative power of a college education for Baltimore City’s public-school students, reflected in our mission statement: “To College. Through College.”