Our Mission

The mission of Chicago Scholars is to provide talented, academically ambitious, and underserved high school students access and success through college and beyond.

Over the next decade, we intend to foster a college-bound culture in every Chicago neighborhood and to improve college completion rates among attendees. To this end, our groundbreaking Campaign for Chicago’s Scholars is a community-wide call-to-action designed to serve 10,000 students by guiding them from high school through to college graduation.

Chicago needs a diverse pool of highly skilled professionals if it is to remain a world-class city in coming years. This campaign will play a key role both in encouraging the creative potential of our students and in producing the workforce our city requires. Approximately 75% of our alumni return to Chicago to work, and even those who settle elsewhere still keep their hometown connections. It is through dedication like this that we can foster a local culture in which college attendance and graduation are the norm.

We serve an extremely diverse, high-need population, as the charts below demonstrate. However, as word of our Scholars’ success grows, so does demand for our programs, and for each Scholar we support we are now forced to turn away at least ten or more qualified students. Surely Chicago can do better in meeting the needs of its kids who are willing to work hard and earn their degrees.