When Ryan Liu was applying to schools as a high school senior, he knew he ultimately wanted a four-year degree. Yet even with offers of financial aid and a number of acceptances from four-year schools, tuition prices were out of his reach at the four-year institutions that accepted him in his home state of California.
So Liu decided to enroll in the local Pasadena Community College to save money and try his luck again later. “Second time around, when I was in community college and applying to school, that’s when I found out about the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation,” he said.
Since its origins in 2000, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has offered a range of grants and scholarships to thousands of low-income students across the country. While higher education is often billed as a meritocracy, the numbers tell a different story. Elite schools tend to disproportionately enroll students from higher-income backgrounds.
A recent report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce found that the nation’s most elite schools could afford to enroll more Pell grant recipients — and that tens of thousands of Pell-eligible students have the grades and scores that would qualify them for admittance at competitive schools but choose to attend open-access institutions instead. The Georgetown report proposes a requirement that Pell grant recipients make up 20 percent of a school’s enrollment, pointing out that some selective schools have already surpassed that mark.
From the start, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has sought to address disparities in the admissions process by providing the funding and support necessary to low-income, high-achieving students. In addition to grants and scholarships, the foundation provides a network of advisors and opportunities to explore different career and academic paths along the way.
As he researched different transfer options, Liu read about a student who gone from a community college to Stanford through the Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship.
Through the transfer scholarship, the foundation covers up to $40,000 of education-related expenses for approximately 55 students each year. Liu was one of thousands who applied for the scholarship for 2015, and is now a rising senior at Yale University studying political science. He is the first in his family to attend college.
