The Posse Foundation is a scholarship program that trains public high school students with significant academic and leadership potential in order to succeed in four-year universities. Recently featured in the New York Times, the purpose of the program is to identify and train students who succeed outside of the traditional college process, such as being evaluated by standardized testing scores. The students are then offered a full four-year scholarship to a certain university that has partnered with their program in their city.
What makes the program unique is that the selection process is not based solely on the potential of the individual students, but instead focuses on the manner in which the individual will enable the entire group to succeed. Students are chosen based on a combination of qualities, with the goal of having a diverse, supportive and balanced group of leaders, usually consisting of about ten students.
Because of the importance placed on social, academic and emotional success, the Posse Foundation has an overall 90-percent success rate in its nationwide program.
Next year, the Posse Foundation will celebrate the graduation of its first Posse class at Connecticut College.
The Posse program uses strategies to pick students who are likely to be successful based on qualities that are generally overlooked by schools. The program partnered with Conn chooses students from Chicago with potential who can contribute to the support of the group as well as the campus as a whole, based on different kinds of leadership demonstrated in high school and interactions in group interviews.
Asia Calcagno ’14, one of ten students in the second Posse class at Conn, explained that the Posse process is based on helping students thrive. “Posse is highly successful—each Posse scholar has gone through eight months of collegiate training during their senior years of high school and the summer before arriving to Conn their freshman year. The training consisted of weekly meetings where the scholars discuss social/political topics, how to achieve academic excellence and ways to become involvement on campus.”
Students in Posse understand that the program has been influential in their life at Conn. “Without Posse, I truly don’t know where I’d be,” said Anthony Sis ’14. “When one of the Posse members is feeling the pressures of academics or social life, we are all there to guide and support one another.”
“There are not too many Midwesterners at this school. One of the greatest benefits of being a part of Posse is that we all have a very stable and common ground: we all come from Chicago. Each part of the city, depending on how you grew up, presents different challenges and issues than other parts of the city, which everyone in Posse understands.”
“Posse’s program has changed my life completely. I would have never been able to go to college if it were not for Posse,” said Calcagno.
Many Posse students express the importance of the program for their ability to attend Conn, thanks not only to the financial support but also the workshops and support of the Posse community.
The Posse Foundation goes beyond offering their students a full tuition scholarship to a four -year university—Posse also offers them support through programs such as biweekly meetings with their Posse group advisor, preparation before college and PossePlus, a yearly conference for all Posse students to discuss typically-ignored campus issues voted on by Posse scholars throughout the nation. Students and professors outside of Posse are invited to attend these retreats in order to educate others about the program and to mutually benefit from each other’s knowledge, perspective and experience.
“The PossePlus retreat provides an avenue to talk about things that aren’t normally discussed,” said Julian Perez ’14.
“As leaders, they want us to think about how we want to make change when we graduate, and the retreat helps provide an avenue for that. Posse does a good job of setting up a comfortable and safe environment for some of the difficult topics—the topic themselves make the students open up.”
Juan Jose Ramos ’15 described the program as preparing him “to have conversations on certain topics that I never would have discussed at home.”
“Being mentally prepared to have these discussions helps you know how to take initiative when you see an injustice happening on campus. In that way, it has helped me developed my leadership skills, and increased my willingness to be involved on campus.”
The Posse Foundation is a resource for students beyond their success on campus. The program offers a range of help, including workshops to help the students to write resumes, and provide access to a network of Posse alumni both while in college and after they graduate.
Through Posse, many students that might not otherwise have been able to attend a four-year university are enabled to succeed in college, let alone become influential leaders, creating change within their communities. •
