Don't Miss Next Week's 50th Anniversary City Club Programs on Affordability
Please join us on Thursday, March 8 at The Happy Dog (West Side) for a City Club panel discussion Behind the Degree: The Cost of Higher Education. Learn how local institutions are addressing the cost of higher education.

Panelists include: Richard W. Bischoff, Vice President of Enrollment, Case Western University; Angela Johnson, Vice President, Access and Completion, Cuyahoga Community College; and Robert A. Spademan, Interim Vice President of Enrollment, Cleveland State University.

For more information on Behind the Degree, click here.

Then, on Friday, March 9, Matthew Chingos, Senior Fellow and Director of the Education Policy Program at the Urban Institute, will present his take on the student loan debt crisis through the lens of his recent book Game of Loans: The Rhetoric and Reality of Student Debt.

For more information and to register for the City Club forum with Matthew Chingos, click here.

These programs on higher education affordability are a part of our 50th Anniversary partnership series with The City Club.

Apply today to become a College Now Mentor!

You are invited to mentor a college student from Cleveland  through College Now Greater Cleveland! Every year, College Now awards local students need-based college scholarships for the duration of their college career. Each scholarship recipient is also paired with a mentor to serve as a guide, sounding board and friend through his/her college journey. Join over 1,000 other Clevelanders already mentoring, and sign up to mentor today!
 
The Mentoring Program pairs College Now scholarship recipients with professionals in the Cleveland area. Mentors support their mentees throughout their college careers by helping them navigate any obstacles they may face that will prevent them from graduating. The structure of the program is very simple and easy to fit into the busy schedules of both working professionals and college students. Throughout their time together, pairs are asked to exchange two messages a month through an online platform and meet at least three times a year. Mentoring Program staff provide guidance and reminders for communication and plan several events during the academic year to help pairs arrange in person meetings.
 
The last three years of the program saw impressive results: 93% of mentored freshmen continued on to their sophomore year of college. This is due to the added support our students receive from mentors and College Now through the Mentoring Program. The time commitment is minimal (minimum of 2 hours per month), and the program is life-changing. To mentor, you must hold a college degree, pass a background check completed by College Now, and have reliable access to the Internet.
 
In the words of a current mentor, "[the program] has allowed me to make a friend that I not only can talk to about the little day to day experiences, but also be a part of some of the most defining years of her life. I've also learned a lot about myself and my own personal growth in the process; I can't recommend being a mentor highly enough!" Become a mentor, and change a life! Sign up today  to make a difference in the life of college student from Greater Cleveland!
 
If you have any questions, please visit our website or contact Madeline Rife (mrife@collegenowgc.org  or 216.635.0163), Mentoring Program Manager.

Five Years In: College Now's Early Action for the Motivated Middle

With generous support from KeyBank and the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation, College Now developed and launched our Early Action for the Motivated Middle Initiative in the 2012-13 school year. Designed to provide proactive and highly personalized college access support to cohorts of rising high school seniors from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) who have demonstrated they are academically "college-ready" but who fall shy of qualifying for special programming and supports available to the highest achieving students, the initiative now has provided excellent teaching and deep learning to hundreds of students.

The initiative kicks off every summer with a three-week intensive boot camp that focuses on preparing for the ACT, visiting local and regional colleges and getting a jump start on college applications, especially the dreaded essay. ACT preparation is particularly important because institutional aid from colleges scales with ACT scores; the higher the score, the higher the aid and, importantly, the lower the cost of college.
Those students who participate in the summer boot camp receive a stipend, and once the school year is underway, all students in the initiative work closely with their College Now advisor in their high schools to complete critical college-going milestones, including on-time submission of college applications and the FAFSA as well as applying for College Now's renewable scholarships.

Students in the initiative's most recent cohort - those who graduated from CMSD in 2017 - had excellent results: 94% applied to college and 76% matriculated, almost double the rate for their entire class (40%). Moreover, 68% of those who applied for a College Now scholarship were awarded one!

This innovative and effective program would not be possible without the sustained commitment from KeyBank and the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation. Thank you!

College Now Greater Cleveland | 216.241.5587 
info@collegenowgc.org | www.collegenowgc.org
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