College Forward (CoFo) provides effective college success services to 2,670 low-income and first-generation high school and college students who attend 14 high schools within the greater Austin and Houston regions and over 90 colleges and universities across the nation. By deploying AmeriCorps*State members to counsel students through the myriad steps towards earning a bachelor’s degree, CoFo effectively harnesses the idealism and steadfast nature of AmeriCorps to respond to an equally intractable problem—the consistent under-representation of low-income students who matriculate, persist, and succeed in college.

We launched our revolutionary College Completion Program in 2005, following two successful years of providing college access services to low-income and first-generation high school students in Central Texas, via an AmeriCorps*State grant. Upon its launch in 2005, CoFo’s College Completion Program was the only one of its kind in the state of Texas and the Southwestern U.S. region. Today it is regarded as a national model, garnering local, regional, and national accolades including College Board’s “CollegeKeys Compact Innovation Award.”

Administered directly by AmeriCorps*State members, the College Completion Program provides the following core services:

1) Transition Support; 2) Academic Mentoring; 3) Financial Aid Counseling; 4) Campus Engagement; 5) Peer Networking and Leadership; and 6) Career Development.

To further promote national service and our organizational value of “paying it forward,” CoFo recruits 8-10 of our own collegians to serve as part of our AmeriCorps Summer Transition Corps. The collegians who are selected gain professional experience while implementing our summer transition plan. Through this plan, the Corps make contact with each new high school graduate to ensure that they will continue with their plans to enroll in college for the coming fall semester. The Corps assist with financial aid issues and personal concerns that often arise during the gap between high school and college. It is thanks in large part to the hard work of this group that we maintain a college matriculation rate of 90% in the 12 months immediately following high school graduation.

Program Outcomes- To date: -90% of our participants matriculate into college within the first 12 months after graduating from high school; -Compared to a 53% average college persistence rate in Central Texas, College Forward students achieve an 82% college persistence rate overall; and -30 of our students have successfully earned their bachelor's degrees as of December 31, 2011 - we anticipate that a total of 727 College Forward collegians will earn their college degrees by 2016.

In 2012-13 CoFo will serve approximately 1,700 students via our College Completion Program initiatives. Through a long-term partnership with the Corporation for National and Community Service and our State Service Commission, OneStar Foundation, College Forward’s AmeriCorps members have proven over the past seven years that programs rooted firmly in the beliefs and idealism of AmeriCorps, can make a significant difference in increasing degree attainment rates for low-income students and loosen the grip of generational poverty through higher education.