Summer Search Joins President Obama At White House College Opportunity Summit

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 4, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today Summer Search joins President Obama, the First Lady and Vice President Biden at the White House College Opportunity Summit in Washington D.C. to announce its commitment to supporting more college opportunities for students across the country.

Bringing together hundreds of education leaders and institutions, this year's College Opportunity Summit focuses on building sustainable collaborations in communities with strong K-12 and higher education partnerships to encourage college going. In addition, the Summit aims to support colleges to work together to dramatically improve persistence and increase college completion—especially for first generation, low-income, and underrepresented students.

"We are honored to be at the White House today for an important discussion about increasing college access for low-income students," said Amy Saxton, CEO of Summer Search. "Summer Search has spent nearly 25 years successfully supporting young people to complete college and transform their lives. We join the President, First Lady and Vice President in their commitment to increasing college opportunities for all students, and we will continue to fight to ensure that more low-income students have a pathway and the resources needed to become college graduates."

As part of its commitment to improve college and career readiness for low-income students, Summer Search will test new innovation strategies to significantly scale its program by 2017. This includes:

• 25% increase in total students enrolled in our program
• 31% increase in students entered into our college readiness pipeline
• 20% increase in college matriculation amongst our student base
• 91% increase in students attaining a B.A.

The College Opportunity Summit builds on commitments made by education leaders at the first-ever White House College Opportunity Day of Action held in January, and is part of the President's efforts to partner with colleges and universities, business leaders, and nonprofits to support students across the country to help our nation reach its goal of leading the world in college attainment.

About Summer Search
Summer Search is a national youth development nonprofit organization dedicated to helping low-income youth to develop the skills and character traits they need to become college-educated leaders who give back to their families and communities. Learn more at www.summersearch.org.

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SOURCE Summer Search

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http://www.summersearch.org