College Access Network

CARPE Collaborative

Measurably Improve College Access

For many students from low-income and historically underrepresented backgrounds, college doesn’t feel like an option. For the past five years, the CARPE Collaborative led by the High Tech High Graduate School of Education has been changing this reality for students across Southern California. We support schools to increase the number of students furthest from opportunity who apply and enroll in colleges they are most likely to graduate from by supporting them to:

Learn More about the Collaborative

Lookup the AG Opportunity Gap at your School

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Evidence-Based Practices

This set of practices has been collaboratively developed and tested across the CARPE network over the past four years. Implementing these practices has led to improvements in student outcomes

CARPE's Impact

“We saw that only 58% of our students of color were filling out the FAFSA, and then we join CARPE and it’s 70+ percent. Automatically, within a year of being a part of this, things changed and we saw that it was important to continue [the work] and pertinent to what we were doing at the school.”

CARPE has had a huge impact on our students and our college going rates

I value the focused, guided practices and processes from the CARPE Network it enabled us to maintain, grow and expand beyond our capabilities.

I value the ability to identify our issue and then work on it throughout the year. It helped to focus our work and goals for the year. The intentionality of our work was evident in our successes.

I value the collaborative groups that shared amazing ideas to improve FAFSA and College completion rates. The constant support from CARPE is priceless.

I value the camaraderie and the collective aim to support all students and address inequities in college access. Great people!

During the 21/22 year, the CARPE network added an additional eleven schools to increase the number of schools participating in the network to 30. Overall, 10 of the 11 new schools onboarded in 2021-22 improved their FAFSA rates by an average of 12 percentage points compared to an average increase of 3 percentage points across California.

On a common survey administered by 20+ networks, CARPE network participants reported above average levels of relational trust in network leaders, a belief that the network was making a difference for the students they serve, and an equity-driven culture.

CARPE schools experienced a slight increase in four year enrollment for the class of 20/21 according to NSC data. This slight increase compares favorably with a decrease in public four year enrollment across the state of California between the class of 2020 and 2021. According to the Los Angeles Times, in California, enrollment at public four-year universities dropped by 2.9% from fall 2020 as compared to fall 2021.

Why Join?

Increase College Access

Learn evidence-based ways to increase FAFSA completion and Cal Grant awardance, enhance the college application/selection process, foster a sense of belonging, and decrease “summer melt”.

Build CI Capacity

Help your school/district develop the skills and dispositions to implement continuous improvement (CI) and make measurable progress on the issues you care about.

A Powerful Network

Join a network of schools and organizations committed to disrupting predictable patterns of student success and failure, with a record of demonstrated success.