The financial needs of our students are great, and the disparity between resources available to our students and those in surrounding areas is striking.

The "funding gap" experienced by students from East Palo Alto is part of a national problem.

• The average annual unmet financial needs (college costs not covered by loans, grants or scholarships) of low-income students in the United States is around $4,000 for public universities and $6,000 for private institutions.
• Nationwide, only 20% of low-income, college-qualified students achieve a bachelor's degree (vs. 60% for high income students).

The discrepancy in resources hits students from our local community especially hard.

• About 10% of the students from East Palo Alto that attend the district's large comprehensive high schools graduate college-ready (having met California's "a-g" Requirements for eligibility to apply to a UC or CSU).
• 11% of East Palo Alto residents hold a bachelor's degree (compared with roughly 75% in neighboring Palo Alto).

In response to these needs, we've created a program in which students earn money for college based on their academic performance. Throughout their tenure at EPAPA, students accrue scholarship dollars when they meet certain academic benchmarks. Once students graduate from high school and present us with evidence of enrollment in a college or university, we will provide them with their individualized scholarship funds.

Students can earn scholarship money three ways:



* These dollar figures are projections based on our funding goals; we would love to be able to provide even larger rewards and incentives for outstanding academic performance. Click here to help us increase the scholarship fund.

We are interested in providing our students with real-world employment experience and compensate them with resources for college. Students will go through an application process to obtain jobs that support our academic and community programs. Students can apply to be after-school tutors or to work in the Bookstore. The goal is that over time students will assume increased responsibility for the implementation of these programs (e.g. manage the Bookstore, including training, inventory management, etc). Students will be compensated with an hourly wage that will be deposited into their scholarship funds.

Students with families who complete or exceed the entire effort unit requirement for the school year will have a bonus added to their scholarship fund.

The scholarship fund relies on donations from generous individuals. Click here to help us provide our student with concrete financial support for college.

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