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UNCF’s Portfolio Project Empowering Students to Successfully Complete their Applications to Get to College

Anyone who’s ever applied to college, or helped a friend or relative apply, knows what a challenge it can be—communicating to colleges and financial aid providers a full and compelling portrait of everything a student would bring to his or her education. And for first-generation learners—students like most UNCF students, who are the first in their family to attend college and don’t have easy access to guidance and advice from parents and siblings that many can take for granted—it is even more of a challenge.

Those are the students that UNCF Seattle’s Portfolio Project was made for.

The UNCF Portfolio Project was launched in 2006 as a community partnership between a variety of organizations, all working to assist 11th and 12th grade students through the college and scholarship application process and increase the number of minority students from Oregon and Washington applying to college.

The Portfolio Project provides 11 weekly Saturday “boot camp” sessions that expose underrepresented high school juniors and seniors to scholarship opportunities and local colleges, universities and historically Black colleges and universities. The boot camps also help students choose a college or university and guides them through the scholarship application process and provides Princeton Review SAT preparation. Sessions are facilitated by UNCF staff, educators, resource providers, current college students and alumni.

Each student is paired with a mentor that helps guide them on how to get to and through college. More than 500 mentors have helped the Portfolio Project serve more than 1,000 students, achieve an 85% rate of college acceptance and help students in Washington and Oregon escape what could have been an educational dead end.

That’s certainly an investment in better futures.