What started as a volunteer-only group to help out less advantaged students at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School is about to expand to a third site.
CollegeTracks, the Bethesda-based nonprofit that provides college counseling services to low-income, minority and first-generation college students, will enter its third Montgomery County public high school this fall when it comes to Watkins Mill High School in Gaithersburg.
A donation by The Norman and Ruth Rales Foundation, the group’s own fundraising and a recommended $100,000 grant from the county will provide CollegeTracks with $350,000 to fund the new program.
“Our high school counselors are responsible for 300 students in four different grades usually and everything from psycho-social issues to course registration to you name it,” co-founder and Executive Director Nancy Leopold said.
“They simply don’t have the time to work with kids, the tens of hundreds of hours it takes to get through the college admissions process,” Leopold said. “So we’re a supplement. We’re doing what no one in the school has the time and in some ways, the expertise to do.”
On Tuesday night, CollegeTracks will host its annual “I’m Going to College” event at the Silver Spring Civic Building. More than 600 students headed to college after graduating this spring from Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Wheaton high schools will be honored.
The group places staff in the schools to help students who are low-to-moderate income, minorities, immigrants and the first in their families to attend college navigate the complicated college admissions process.
The staff typically start working with students during junior year, helping with test preparation and figuring out areas of interest. They also coach students on how to present themselves to other counselors and admissions officers.
Filing for financial aid is a major part of the puzzle, Leopold said, with many students needing help to complete complicated federal documents and then to find loans for which they may be eligible.
CollegeTracks also runs a summer program and about a quarter of its students remain in touch with the group’s counselors once they make it to college.
Leopold said it’s common for CollegeTracks counselors to meet with students at college to talk about adjusting to college life, study skills and other issues.
The nonprofit will also provide assistance with the transfer process—many of its students attend Montgomery College and then transfer to four-year schools.
More than 80 percent of the nonprofit’s budget goes toward paying staff, who regularly receive referrals from school counselors. CollegeTracks estimates its services cost less than $1,200 per student.
Leopold said CollegeTracks worked with Montgomery County Public Schools to identify Watkins Mill as the site for an expansion, starting in the 2015-2016 school year.
In 2003, when Leopold and two others started the program at Bethesda-Chevy Chase, the county was undergoing a significant demographic shift. More low-income students, many who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, were entering the school system. Leopold said that shift has become more pronounced in the last decade.
“We weren’t that clever. We were solving a problem that was very much in our neighborhood,” Leopold said. “We started by satisfying a need that we knew existed there. It never occurred to us at that time how that need would grow.”
Eventually, CollegeTracks would like to work directly with the 11 county high schools labeled as “critical need” schools, she said.
