The Week, a weekly periodical, featured Let’s Get Ready in its December 22 US edition as the “Charity of the week”. The paper cites a 14% college graduation rate for high school graduates from low-income circumstances. “Let’s Get Ready aims to close the achievement gap by helping [students from low-income backgrounds] and first-generation-to-college students [...]
Every spring and fall for almost a decade, about 50 Somerville High School students received free SAT preparation and college admission counseling from undergraduate volunteers as part of a local Let’s Get Ready program. This chapter, which has now served hundreds of students, was established by Vanessa Fass (née Salazar), a Tufts University graduate. [...]
On October 24, fourteen students and Coaches from Let’s Get Ready’s College Success Program were treated to an Executive Tour of the Viacom headquarters in Times Square. The broadcasting corporation, which operates Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, and Paramount Pictures, arranged for the Let’s Get Ready group to attend a taping of immensely popular Total Request [...]
As a Let’s Get Ready Access Coach in Lynn, Massachusetts, Yvane Ngassa serves as a role model and mentor for her peers as she instructs them on the SAT. Now a pre-med student at Tufts University, she has overcome major challenges to secure her seat in the classroom, and is showing high school juniors [...]
“I knew that I’d be at a disadvantage in the college admissions process compared to students from different socioeconomic standings,” Says Eric Cora from the Bronx, New York. “I saw Let’s Get Ready as the tool for leveling the playing field and making me a more competitive applicant to colleges.” Eric learned about Let’s [...]
Incoming college freshmen from Let's Get Ready's programs throughout the Mid-Atlantic and New England recently gathered for several Transition Day events where they attended workshops, panels, and activities to help them prepare for their first semester on campus. They were also rewarded with dorm supplied from Grad Bag, an organization that reclaims and repurposes [...]
The success of students that pass through Let’s Get Ready’s College Access Programs is well-documented, but our Coaches also gain from being peer-to-peer mentors. Alison Simon, an Access Coach at Barnard College, recently wrote in with some notes about her experiences: After tutoring several different subjects throughout high school, I arrived at college eager [...]
Grad Bag, a Let’s Get Ready partner organization that collects, cleans, and sorts lightly used dorm supplies for reuse by incoming students, just held its first giveaway of the season at Sarah Lawrence in Bronxville, New York. The group of nearly 100 students chose from a selection of storage containers, bedsheets, furniture, and cushions [...]
Haby Gadio, a student and Let’s Get Ready Site Director at Barnard College, is a natural leader and high-achiever, with her eyes set on a career in helping others as part of a nonprofit or governmental organization. “I hope to make a positive impact in my community and on a global scale,” she asserts, [...]
UPDATE: As of May 2018, Tanvir has graduated from Colby. He continues to serve as a mentor through Americorps and Legal Outreach.Tanvir Shahjahan is fundamentally devoted to the concept of education. At Colby College in Waterville, Maine, he majors in biology while triple-minoring in neuroscience, sociology, and managerial economics. “As stereotypical as it sounds, I [...]