Founded in 1998 by a college student who wanted to help her peers transition to college, Let’s Get Ready (LGR) has supported more than 50,000 students nationwide in their aspirations to gain access to college and earn a degree through our innovative near-peer mentorship model. The simple idea that near-peers are the best resource for students navigating college has matured to support more than 24,000 students in 45 states and over 1,800 zip codes nationwide.

LGR prioritizes students who are first-generation to college and from low-income communities, and our virtual, near-peer intervention is proven effective as our students graduate at double the rate of their peers! 

This fall, Let’s Get Ready (LGR) will launch an initiative to support students access to and success in college throughout Connecticut. Our first and signature partnership will be with the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities (CSCU) system. CSCU comprises six institutions, including four regional universities – Central, Eastern, Southern, and Western Connecticut State Universities – Charter Oak State College, and Connecticut State Community College (CT State). Through this partnership, LGR will provide its virtual, near-peer coaching program as a system-wide intervention that will gradually scale to support 10,000 CSCU students over the next three years.

This is a new and ambitious endeavor. Providing near-peer mentors to CSCU students throughout the state will be a key retention strategy. This will be of special importance to CSCU as it supports CT State in its move forward as a single accredited institution, and near-peer mentors will aid the participating universities in targeting times when students are most likely to be at risk of dropping out. At this exciting juncture, LGR’s expertise working on system-wide partnerships in Maine and South Carolina will significantly inform this new initiative in Connecticut by offering a tested solution for our partners and a customized experience for students that follow them across institutions, through interruptions, and no matter their geography.

Conversely, CSCU’s trust in LGR’s model and impact allows the organization to expand its reach exponentially as it builds a case for transformative state and system-wide post-secondary support for students nationally. This partnership is generously supported by the ECMC Foundation, which has a history of deep collaboration for systemic interventions. The ECMC Foundation was an early investor in LGR’s state-wide intervention in Maine with the University of Maine system’s Early College and Southern Maine Community College. The organization’s success in Maine led to the foundation reinvesting in LGR’s model for systemic change in Connecticut.

 To support LGR and the Connecticut initiative, please contact Marvin Vilma, Managing Director of Development, at mvilma@letsgetready.org.