History

Let's Get Ready was founded in the summer of 1998 by Jeannie Lang Rosenthal, a Harvard undergraduate from Scarsdale, NY. Believing that the knowledge and experience she had gained while applying to college could be of substantial value to high school students who lacked access to the critical support resources she had, she started the first Let's Get Ready program in a church basement in Mount Vernon, NY. That fall Jeannie brought the program to Harvard where it continues today.

Upon Jeannie's graduation from Harvard in 2000, the College Board granted Let's Get Ready seed funding and substantial in-kind support to replicate the Mount Vernon and Harvard programs. Since that time Let's Get Ready has grown exponentially, and in 2010 with the assistance of over 900 college students, Let's Get Ready plans to run 58 programs serving 2,320 under-served students throughout the Northeast.

Using volunteer college students as tutors, mentors and role models, Let's Get Ready provides low-income students with intensive SAT preparation and critical assistance with all aspects of the college admissions process. Built upon collaborations with colleges, high schools and community organizations, Let's Get Ready is taking an innovative and successful program model to scale.

Let's Get Ready would like to thank, in particular, The Samuel Huntington Public Service Award, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Public Service Fellowship, the Steiner Memorial Grant program at Harvard, and Boston's Congregation Leon de Juda for believing in our work early on and making Let's Get Ready possible!