College Summit Previews For Obama Administration Its New College Access And Success Apps For Low-Income Students

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at the White House and the U.S. Department of Education's Education Datapalooza, College Summit showcased its new suite of 19 online and mobile apps developed to help low-income students and their families navigate the college application process.  College Summit students trained educators and counselors to use the apps at the event, which featured U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and Assistant to the President Cecilia Munoz. Education Datapalooza was organized by the Obama Administration to spur innovators to build products, services and apps to advance post-secondary education.

"This is an important new category of apps. The path to college is neither easy nor intuitive – especially for a student whose parents, siblings and friends have not pursued it. These apps provide all students – no matter their circumstances – with a simple, step-by-step approach through the college application process," said Dr. Keith Frome, co-founder of College Summit, executive director of the King Center Charter School and the co-leader of the College Knowledge Challenge.

College Summit, a national nonprofit that transforms the lives of low-income youth by developing a corps of high school students who lead their peers to and through college, created these apps with an investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and in partnership with Facebook. The apps can be found on CollegeAppMap.org.

During the Education Datapalooza, College Summit students from the Friendship Collegiate Academy in Washington, D.C. trained 30 educators from schools in the Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia areas to use the College Summit apps in order to take the apps back to their schools to share the information with their students. This year, with an investment from the Bezos Family Foundation, College Summit will scale the student-led training model to 10 cities, helping more than 100,000 high school students from low-income communities access these critical new tools.

The apps highlighted during the Education Datapalooza included: Zombie College, a game that promotes a fun way of learning about the college access process; CollegeAbacus, a one-stop shop for comparing college pricing; and Career Connect, an app that links students with experts to answer questions about college and career paths are among the apps that are available on the web, Facebook, Apple's App Store, and Google Play.

On Thursday, January 16, by invitation from President Obama, College Summit will participate in the College Access Summit, an event held at the White House focused on increasing college access for low income and disadvantaged students. Leaders from the business industry, including Deloitte, Walmart, AT&T, Darden Restaurants and Mutual of America will join College Summit to announce ScholarJob – a new initiative that assigns businesses a strong, structured role in raising the number of low income high school students getting to and through college. Through this program, College Summit is encouraging corporate America to strengthen U.S. competitiveness and communities by developing the talent of this nation's youth.

About College Summit
College Summit is the national nonprofit that transforms the lives of low-income youth by developing a corps of high school students who lead their peers to and through college. The organization, which has been recognized for its social innovation by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and President Obama, annually serves 50,000 students. In 2010, College Summit was one of ten groups honored and selected to receive a portion of President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize money.  The First Lady's support dates back to 2002, when she was on the organization's Chicago Board. College Summit provides a system for improving college access and career success in 180 partner high schools in 15 states. Learn more at www.collegesummit.org.

SOURCE College Summit