The Cornerstone of Our Success

Vision:

All students deserve the opportunity to access and complete college, regardless of their social and economic circumstances. 

Mission:

• Identify and support low-income, primarily first-generation-to college students and help them to plan for, apply to, attend, and graduate from a selective four-year college.

• Build leaders and Scholars by mentoring and empowering students in their personal and academic development.

• Help school systems, universities, and other education-related organizations improve college advising, educator training, and student support.

Our Story

Since 2005, Collegiate Directions, Inc. has worked to reduce the achievement and opportunity gap for first-generation-to-college students from low-income households with a series of programs designed to help them maximize their potential and ensure they are equipped with the academic, financial, and social-emotional tools necessary to successfully graduate from college and prepare for the world of work.

Ours is a high-touch model that begins in 10th grade when Scholars are assigned a CDI counselor who initiates a series of wraparound services that include study skills workshops, test preparation, college application assistance, development of tailored college lists, financial aid application support, and ongoing assistance and leadership throughout college. CDI’s wellness counseling is offered to every high school student enrolled in the Scholars Program to help them address and work through a range of personal issues. Our career mentorship program provides a deep, ongoing impact that focuses on career coaching and access to workforce opportunities through experiential learning.

With more than 450 students having participated in our Scholars Program and thousands more reached by our School Support program in which we share our best practices to help equip high school college counselors with the knowledge necessary to get their students on the path to a degree, CDI has developed a model for student success that defies conventional wisdom and outpaces national averages.

According to the Pell Institute, only 16-percent of low-income, first-generation-to-college students graduate from college within six years. For CDI Scholars in this same demographic, 89-percent graduate from college. 

Beyond preparing our Scholars for the academic rigor of college, CDI emphasizes the importance of developing them as well-rounded, responsible, productive citizens. Each year CDI Scholars develop and implement a service project to lend their support to those in need. In one such project, Scholars raised more than $2,000 and secured miscellaneous supplies to assist students at a school in Sierra Leone.

Because CDI enters the lives of our Scholars at a period of transition from high school to college and follows them through college, helping them move onto their career paths, we know the challenges they face in the best of times, and how personal issues can make their journey even more difficult. As a result, CDI invests significant time, effort, and energy into the mental health and well-being of our Scholars. In recent years we have expanded our mental health offerings and staff to permit each Scholar more time to meet one-on-one with a wellness counselor.

The results CDI achieves are the result of a strategy cultivated over the past 15 years that rests on the bedrock principle that potential cannot turn into opportunity without support, and without support, opportunity cannot turn into success. At CDI, support is infused into everything we do and is the common thread that allows us to produce remarkable results. 

Scholars and their families are supported by CDI which is supported by generous individual donors and forward-thinking organizations whose support has allowed for the expansion of our core offerings beyond the classroom. 

Even in the face of new challenges CDI’s critical work continues as we collectively embrace our Scholars and move forward together, toward a brighter, more hopeful tomorrow where they can achieve all that is possible.