City Public Schools and CUNY Partners for Student Success
Icommend the New York Post for the important public service provided by this supplement. The City University of New York has a vital stake in its work because 75 percent of our freshman class, including both community and senior colleges, is composed of New York City public high school graduates. They and their parents understand that a quality and affordable education is their ladder to career success.
In this issue you can read about a few of our outstanding students whose CUNY work and pursuit of intellectual interests have earned them some of the most competitive and prestigious scholarships and fellowships in the nation.
Dalila Ordonez, for instance, who graduated from Grover Cleveland High School and went on to Hunter College to earn a B.A. in Biopsychology, is now a doctoral student at Harvard University. She is doing research that may lead to effective treatment for Parkinson’s disease.
Ordonez is one of 15 CUNY graduates this year to win a coveted National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Many more students at The City University of New York regularly earn other prestigious awards including Truman, Goldwater, Soros and Rhodes scholarships and Fulbright Fellowships for research and teaching abroad.
Others featured in this section are Johnathan Culpepper (Medgar Evers College), who won an NSF fellowship to study whether nitrogen and carbon greenhouse gases can be pulled out of the atmosphere and locked up as minerals; Benjamin Rudshteyn (Macaulay Honors College at Brooklyn College), who won a Goldwater Scholarship in 2012 and an NSF fellowship this year to continue his studies at Yale; and Evgeniya Kim (Macaulay Honors College at Queens College), who has lived, studied and worked around the world and won a $90,000 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans to be used for her MBA studies at the Yale School of Management. She hopes to become a consultant for international development organizations.
The quality of our students – and not just those who win awards – illustrates the CUNY Value.
At CUNY, top-quality education goes hand in hand with financial value. No institution has had a greater role in helping new Americans, low-income students and first-generation collegegoers achieve their dreams. No institution has had a greater role in the social and economic well-being of its city and state – a mission that has never been more critical to fulfill.
In today’s higher education marketplace, yearly college bills can easily outpace family wages. Student-loan debt now exceeds $1.1 trillion nationwide.
But, as some 270,000 degree-seeking students know, CUNY’s tuition is among the most affordable in the nation. CUNY’s low costs enable six in 10 full-time undergraduate students to attend college tuition-free – fully covered by financial aid – and for eight in 10 to graduate carrying no federal education debt. And when our students do borrow, they end up owing less than their peers elsewhere.
Incoming New York City high school graduates are eligible for additional help from the City Council. Each year they can qualify for an $800 scholarship by maintaining a “B” average at any CUNY college.
CUNY success stories often begin in the city’s public schools, which provide dedicated teaching, innovative programs and academic rigor to inspire students to academic heights. The University collaborates with the public schools in critical ways to prepare students for the future.
To name just one partnership: CUNY’s College Now program (collegenow.cuny.edu), developed in close partnership with the New York City Department of Education, helps 28,000 College Now participants in 400 high schools take pre-college and college-credit courses in subjects ranging from environmental health to architecture. They jump-start their college careers through morning, after-school and summer courses.
As we commend the high schools that the New York Post has identified as the city’s best, we reaffirm the University’s commitment to working with the Department of Education and all public schools to increase students’ college readiness and help prepare them for success.
Most CUNY graduates remain in the city and state, contributing to New York’s stability, economy and quality of life. New York’s future depends on our partnership, and on our success. We look forward to working together to offer the next generation the higher education opportunities they deserve. Students choose CUNY because it offers a remarkable education, outstanding teachers and phenomenal value.