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The program, appropriately called COACH (College Opportunity and Career Help), was new and was the brainchild of Harvard faculty members Tom Kane (now of UCLA) and Chris Avery. “I had no idea how it would impact my life,” says Cahill, one of several Harvard graduate students to help launch the project.

Equally unaware of the program’s influence were the inner-city youth who gathered weekly to review curriculum prerequisites, wade through application paperwork and decipher financial aid jargon — all under the watchful eyes of coaches such as Cahill.  "I worked with some students who were determined to go on to college and others who wouldn't graduate from high school," she says.  "What impressed me about all of them was the way they responded to the one-on-one and small-group attention we provided.”

She recalls a gifted young woman, “full of sassy street smarts,” who couldn’t afford the tuition at a local private school and thought she had no other options. Cahill counseled the teen toward a public university, where she quickly rose to the top of her class and is “well on her way to the business career she used to talk about.” They keep in touch, and Cahill, now project manager for the Mass Insight Education and Research Institute, is convinced that “without COACH, this student would not be in such an exciting position.”

Getting an early start
Some success stories take more time to unfold.  Chris Avery tells of a young man who contacted the COACH office to ask for help six months after completing high school. “He told us that he liked the COACH program well enough when he was a senior but hadn’t envisioned himself attending college,” says Avery. “Now, several months into his first job, he’s realized that he needs a degree to advance.” In response to the request, the COACH staff set up an after-hours crash course in college admissions; today the youth is a full-time student at a Florida college.

“We work with all kinds of kids,” says Avery.  “Some are recent immigrants who have very different outlooks on what they have planned for the future. Others come from families who have lived in Boston for generations. We have gifted students, and we have special-needs students. The exciting part is when we put kids in touch with a coach who helps them believe in their future; suddenly, they realize that the system can work for them.”

That message is reaching students earlier now that COACH is piloting a two-year version that offers its services to juniors at three Boston high schools. With the help of a $97,800 grant from Lumina Foundation, the college-preparation work is no longer compressed into a few months. “One of our goals this year was to have all the juniors register to take the SAT,” explains Maureen O’Donnell, a guidance counselor at Boston High School. “This will allow students more opportunities to qualify for those scholarships with deadlines that occur early in their senior year. Much to our satisfaction, and as a direct result of COACH, we’ve met this objective.”

The more leisurely time frame also allows the Harvard coaches to take students on field trips to area colleges, gives teens the chance to identify summer opportunities that might help them toward their education goals and adds an extra year if the students need to play catch-up with classes that they didn’t realize were required at some schools.

“The senior year is very much about helping students with the nitty-gritty pieces of the application process — registering for the SAT, filling out forms, reading drafts of essays and looking at acceptance letters and evaluating awards packages,” explains Rachel Garber, director of the COACH program. “We have many students who never considered postsecondary education until they were presented information about the affordability of community college and about the transfer policies between community colleges and four-year schools.”