Project GRAD USA is a national nonprofit education reform model serving more than 134,000 economically disadvantaged youth in 213 schools across the nation. GRAD’s mission is to ensure a quality public education for economically disadvantaged students so that high school graduation and college entrance rates increase dramatically. 

As a partner with communities seeking to create a rigorous college-bound culture for their students, GRAD is deeply committed and uniquely qualified to produce high quality results that advance the vision of high school graduation and college success for all.

GRAD may be best known for providing guaranteed college scholarships to participating students. In fact, its support begins in the early childhood years. GRAD follows a preK–16 comprehensive model of reform, bringing together technical, curricular, and professional development support to its partner school districts. This model emphasizes support in the following key areas:

1. Enhanced academic preparation and rigor, especially in mathematics and literacy;
2. Social services supports to help students and parents secure additional resources to advance educationally;
3. Parent and community engagement; and
4. Information and guidance on college readiness and access.

Most distinctively, GRAD provides a guaranteed college scholarship for all graduates of GRAD high schools who meet the following criteria:

1. Graduating in four years,
2. Maintaining a cumulative GPA of 2.5 or above, and
3. Successfully completing two Project GRAD-sponsored Summer Institutes with partner colleges and universities.

This formula had allowed GRAD to achieve a proven track record nationwide in increasing high school graduation and college attendance rates for low-income students. In the longest-served group of schools, GRAD students are completing college at a rate 92% above the national average (51.5% of GRAD students are completing college versus the national average of 26.8%) for students from similar low-income backgrounds.

GRAD has already sent high school graduates to more than 100 institutions of higher education, including many of the most highly selective colleges and universities in the nation. At the beginning of high school, many of GRAD’s students would never have dreamed of attending Cornell, Emory, Georgetown, Rice, Texas, Virginia, Princeton, Columbia, Ohio State, Yale or Harvard—yet GRAD has altogether altered those expectations.