Think back 4 years to when you were applying to college. Did you have to deal with the problem of too many cooks in the kitchen? By the time applications were due did you just want to be left alone by your parents, school counselors, admissions consultants, SAT tutors, teachers, friends, and alumni connections? Although many students are overwhelmed by having too much support during the college admissions process, there is a significant population of low-income students who forgo college because they don’t have anyone to help them apply. They weren’t raised in a college-going culture – their parents never went to college, their school counselors aren’t properly trained, and they can’t afford tutors and consultants.

College Summit is a non-profit organization that works with low-income students, secondary schools, school districts, and colleges to increase post-secondary enrollment. By creating strategic partnerships, College Summit is able to build a college-going culture where it has never existed before. They first create relationships with schools that have low college enrollment rates. Then College Summit builds networks with the most influential students at these partner schools and equips the students with the skills and knowledge that they need to take on the college application process. By doing so, College Summit instills knowledge in those who are most able to pass it on to their peers. Finally, College Summit connects partner schools and their students with colleges that are actively recruiting low-income students.

College Summit has an excellent website. It’s content-rich and will give you a great feel for what the organization is about. Their employment page is especially easy to navigate – it separates job openings into Entry-Level, Mid-Level, and Senior-Level positions. (Why can’t more employers do this?). College Summit is currently hiring Operations Associates in Colorado and New York and a Financial Coordinator at their National Office in the D.C. area. These positions (and most at College Summit) are not hands-on jobs, so you won’t be working with students. These are support roles where you will be an integral part of the behind the scenes operations at College Summit. If you want to take a more direct role in working with low-income students who are applying to college, these positions probably aren’t right for you.

College Summit also has a page that outlines their hiring process, which couldn’t be more helpful. The only issue is that this page tells you that you should apply through e-mail to jobs@collegesummit.org, while their job descriptions (which are downloadable PDFs) have links to an application page. Maybe they changed their process and didn’t update the page. We’d recommend using the links in the job descriptions if you’re going to apply.

Note: On April 26th we revisited entry-level jobs at College Summit.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• College Summit Home Page
• Employment at College Summit
• Entry-Level Opportunities at College Summit
• College Summit’s Hiring Process
• Essays from College Summit Students
• College Summit Featured in Fast Company Magazine’s Social Capitalist Awards
• Yale Daily News Article on College Summit’s Working with Yale
• College Summit in the New York Times
• NY Times Slideshow on College Summit
• College Summit in Forbes
• Video on College Summit

What do you know about College Summit? Leave a comment.

We've identified College Summit as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• all employers
• California
• education
• non-profit
• operations

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