When 19-year-old Jesus Valdez reflects on how he got from Boyle Heights, one of the poorest areas of Los Angeles, to the University of California, Merced, a small but growing college surrounded by farmlands just north of Fresno, California — College Track is one of the first things that comes to mind.
The California-based nonprofit — which got its start in 1997 in East Palo Alto — provides college advising, academic and financial support to first-generation college students such as Valdez over a period of 10 years, starting the summer before ninth grade and continuing through college.
Among the many organizations that provide such services for first-generation and low-income students, College Track stands out because of the amount of time the organization invests, said Bill DeBaun, director of data and evaluation at the National College Access Network, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.
“The 10-year commitment they make to students fosters deep, meaningful relationships that students can rely on through the duration of the completion pipeline,” DeBaun told Diverse.
Valdez — whose mother packages fake jewelry for minimum wage and whose father is a welder — is a living testament to that.
“I’m pretty sure I would have been very lost without College Track,” Valdez said recently. “I don’t think I would have been here.”
Nor would Valdez have secured as much scholarship money as he did to offset the cost of college, which at UC Merced can be close to $36,000 for students who live on campus.
