Rutgers Gets ‘Em While They’re Young
Posted on June 27, 2008
Filed Under News, The Daily Prereq | By Jessica Dye
Congratulations, Lamont Higgins–before you even set foot in high school, you’ve been accepted to Rutgers University! And no, the eighth-grader from New Brunswick, NJ, isn’t a six-foot basketball prodigy or math superstar. He’s one of 200 participants in the Rutgers Future Scholars Program, designed to get smart kids from at-risk neighborhoods planning for college from an early age. As long as Lamont keeps a B average ’til graduation, he’ll get free tutoring, mentoring, test-prep…and a free ride to Rutgers. Lamont’s mother told The Star-Ledger the program is “worth more than winning the Mega Millions,” which is not exactly true (Mega Millions jackpot: currently $34 million! Which reminds me…), but we understand her excitement.
So is it a worthwhile investment to get the Youth of New Jersey suited up as Scarlet Knights? The AP today reported on a similar program called “Say Yes to Education,” which, in 1991, offered to foot tuition and tutoring bills for 69 Boston second-graders. The program just saw its last participant graduate with a pharmacy Ph.D., and all but seven of the original participants either graduated from high school or got their GEDs. 35 of them took up the offer of free higher-ed rides.
Will Lamont and his classmates see the same success rates? Maybe, but if nothing else, it’s got him and others thinking outside their troubled neighborhoods at an early age. Get ready to go “awww”–Lamont wrote in his program application essay: “I said my parents didn’t have enough money and sometimes students drop out and work at McDonald’s, and sometimes they join gangs or do drugs.” Not you, dude! We’ll be keeping an eye out for him and the rest in the Class of 2016.
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