College Access for All of Los Angeles

Youth economic advancement

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

First-generation, low-income and underrepresented youth attend college at significantly lower rates than their peers (Arzumanian, 2023; NCES, 2022). In communities throughout Los Angeles, first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students lack the college access culture, knowledge and familial experience to successfully navigate the complex and ever evolving college access landscape. While they nonetheless have talent, intelligence and drive in amounts equal to their peers, without expert college access support they often are unable to access the many resources available to them for college access and success.
Additionally, many high school counselors throughout Los Angeles are overburdened with numerous tasks unrelated to college access and have a case load far surpassing the American Counseling Association’s recommended ratio of 250:1. The current ratio in California is 464:1–nearly double the recommendation (California School Boards Association, 2024).

This grant will support two aspects of our work. First is Decision Day! Decision Day (DD) is a college-access festival that celebrates the post-high school plans of young Angelenos at each of our 33 partner high schools, while also building college-going culture for the entire school. At DD, students proudly proclaim their college of choice while being celebrated by their school community. These are large, usually outdoor festivals featuring food, games, programming and educational achievement. The remainder of the funding will support the placement of full-time, caring, highly trained college advisers at 35 high schools throughout LA County including: Central LA, South LA, San Gabriel Valley, South Bay & Long Beach. Advisers will support students with the entire college access process from research through enrollment. All students within the schools we serve are eligible for services. There is no application or participation criteria. Advisers conduct significant outreach to seniors and juniors to ensure the highest percentage of students receiving service. On average, a college adviser meets with 93% of all the seniors at their schools. That’s 10,946 students in 2024 alone!
And finally, this funding will create greater bandwidth for school counselors. The addition of a USC CAC college adviser significantly increases the counseling team’s capacity, as the adviser takes on all or most of the direct student support in time consuming college access processes.

USC CAC has helped more first-gen, low-income, underrepresented students go to college than fit in Dodgers Stadium: 70,000+. With this grant, we would help more students than fit in the Coliseum–100,000+.
One of these students is Carlos. As a high school senior, he was homeless–couch surfing on his best nights. He followed friends to the Millikan HS college center, but never engaged. USC CAC college adviser, Dennis, made sure that even though Carlos hid behind his friends, he was not left behind. Dennis asked, “What about you? Where are you going to college?” Carlos didn’t know he could. But with Dennis’ support, he applied, got in, got financial aid, went on to graduate and is now a financial analyst for a Fortune 10 company.
When low-income, first-gen students go to college, it changes their lives and their families. The impact of thousands of students doing the same, changes neighborhoods, communities and cities, resulting in durable, generational socioeconomic change.

We measure our performance closely, tracking all student interactions such as 1:1 and group meetings, number of college apps submitted, acceptances, financial aid submissions, enrollment etc.
We have directly assisted over 70,000 first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students go to college. 90% of the students we serve are youth of color and 67% are low-income. The college enrollment rate at a USC CAC partner school is 9% greater than other Title 1 schools in LA County (65% vs. 56%). For financial aid, our college advisers worked tirelessly this difficult year with students 1:1, in group workshops during and after school, and with parents. Data from the California Student Aid Commission (CSAC) show that of the 11,985 seniors in our schools, 8,216 (69%) have submitted and 7,728 (64%) have completed their FAFSA or Dream Act application. We have helped close the submission and completion gap by at least 10%, compared to LA County.