The Posse Foundation, Boston

The Posse Foundation is a nationally recognized youth leadership development and college access program that identifies, recruits, and trains diverse teams—Posses—of public high school students and sends them to top colleges and universities. To date, more than 8,480 Posse Scholars have been accepted into top-tier institutions of higher education throughout the country. These young people have received more than $1.2 billion in full-tuition leadership scholarships from Posse’s college and university partners and have been agents of positive change on their campuses.

Posse’s unique and carefully structured, three-month selection process identifies candidates using criteria beyond academic achievement, including leadership talent, desire to succeed and ability to work constructively with people from diverse backgrounds. Posse’s high school through college programming makes it one of the most comprehensive programs of its kind in the nation. In 2010, The Posse Foundation was identified by President Obama as one of 10 national non-profit organizations to receive a portion of his Nobel Peace Prize grant. The foundation is poised to double in size over the next ten years and dramatically increase its national impact.

Posse’s current university partners include Agnes Scott, Babson, Bard, Boston U., Brandeis, Bryn Mawr, Bucknell, Carleton, Centre, Colby, Wooster, Connecticut, Cornell, Dartmouth, Davidson, Denison, DePauw, Dickinson, Franklin & Marshall, George Washington, Grinnell, Hamilton, Hobart and William Smith, Kalamazoo, Lafayette, Lawrence, Lehigh, Middlebury, Mount Holyoke, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Oberlin, Pepperdine, Pomona, Sewanee, Smith, St. Olaf, Syracuse, Texas A&M, Trinity, Tulane, Union, UC Berkeley, U. Michigan, Puget Sound, Rochester, UT Austin, U. Virginia, UW Madison, Vanderbilt, Vassar, Wesleyan, and Wheaton.