Bloomingdale High School Counseling Department

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation enables high-ability middle and high school students with financial need to realize their full academic potential. Through the Young Scholars Program, the Foundation has to date supported 600 students from across the nation, providing them with individualized educational advising combined with comprehensive financial support from the 8th grade through high school.

Beginning in the eighth grade, the Young Scholars Program, working through fourteen on-staff educational advisers, enables students to:

• Participate in high-quality academic and extracurricular opportunities in their local community, on college campuses, and around the globe.
• Develop the knowledge, talents, and leadership skills to be significant contributors to their field of interest and society at large.
• Set and reach academic and talent goals that will prepare them to be competitive, well-informed applicants for our nation’s best colleges and universities.

For example, during the summer of 2013, Young Scholars attended 57 different domestic and 16 international summer programs. Scholars explored academic topics such as marine biology, cryptology, creative writing, computer science, and Arabic, developed leadership skills by participating in service-learning programs, and competed in national and international music competitions, earning high-level awards.

Since our start in 2001, eight cohorts of Young Scholars have graduated from high school and gone on to attend and graduate from many of the most selective colleges and universities in the nation. Eighty-six percent of Young Scholars graduating high school in 2013 are attending the highest-ranked collegesi, including: 

• 3 at Harvard University
• 2 at Johns Hopkins University
• 3 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 3 at Princeton University
• 4 at Stanford University
• 5 at Yale University