Not Going It Alone

On a recent fall afternoon here, 100 high-school seniors jostled into the offices of the

Posse Foundation in lower Manhattan. Some were boisterous and brash, others more subdued and nervous.

But all were on their best behavior, because the stakes were high: The “casting call” could earn them a four-year, full-tuition scholarship to a prestigious college or university. And for the inner-city students — who all attend public high schools in New York and were nominated by a teacher, guidance counselor, or other adult — their performance that day would lead to the make-or-break decision.

After everyone had signed in and assembled in a large conference room, Deborah Bial, Posse’s president, welcomed the students. “You’re all here because someone in your life noticed you,” she said, as they beamed back at her. “They thought you had success written all over you.”

Building Robots

Over the next three hours, Posse staff members observed the students as they carried out several interactive activities, including team-oriented challenges such as building a robot out of Legos and creating public-service announcements on social issues.

The exercises were just the first step in Posse’s rigorous evaluation process, designed by Ms. Bial. Posse seeks out students who exhibit leadership, persistence, motivation, and other qualities that are often overlooked by traditional college-admissions practices, which rely heavily on grade-point averages and Scholastic Aptitude Test scores.

“There are a lot of programs in the United States that define themselves by the deficiencies of the population they’re serving — they’re helping poor kids or at-risk kids,” says Ms. Bial (rhymes with “real”). “Posse is not about that at all. Posse is about identifying unbelievably talented young people, but through nontraditional means.”

While the students gathered at the main Posse office, similar group interviews were being held across New York, as 2,900 students competed for just 130 slots at Colby College, Middlebury College, Vanderbilt University, and nine other institutions that work with Posse’s New York program. All told, this fall 7,000 students from Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington vied for 350 scholarships at 28 selective institutions.

Many education leaders, college presidents, and others have praised the Posse Foundation’s work. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation gave Ms. Bial one of its “genius awards” in September, citing her work as an “education strategist” who has developed a way to help inner-city students gain admission to and then graduate from the country’s top institutions.

The organization’s success is also attested to by a lengthy roster of grant makers — including the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Sallie Mae Fund, and the Lumina Foundation for Education — which last year contributed more than $4.5-million toward Posse’s $6.8-million budget. Yet while many groups use pieces of the Posse formula — offering mentors, retreats, or intensive academic preparation — few, if any, have picked up Posse’s comprehensive approach, even though Ms. Bial says she would be more than happy to see that happen.

An Epiphany

Ms. Bial founded Posse in 1989, when, shortly after graduating from Brandeis University with a degree in English literature, she was working at a youth-leadership program that sought to identify young people in New York City who could succeed at competitive colleges. Discouraged by the college-dropout rates of participants, Ms. Bial had an epiphany when one student said he wouldn’t have dropped out if he had had his “posse” — in the urban lingo of that time — to back him up.

Why not send a “posse” — a group of 10 or so students — from an urban metropolitan area to the same college, providing a built-in support system, she wondered.

“We’re addressing the issues that colleges have with keeping students on campus,” says Ms. Bial, now 42. “So if you grew up in Bed-Stuy [the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn] or the South Side of Chicago or in some other big, urban environment and you end up in Vermont or Iowa, if you have a group, you’re a little less likely to turn around and come home when you encounter some of the culture shock in such a radically different environment.”

Adds Rico Blancaflor, a former Posse scholar at Vanderbilt who is now the group’s national director of training and site development: “The concept’s so simple, it’s almost universal. It doesn’t matter if you’re minority or poor or wealthy; if you explain the concept to somebody, they always say, man, I could have used that.”

To be selected as part of a posse, students must first make it through a rigorous application process. Ms. Bial refined her ideas for the program, particularly the use of “noncognitive” traits as screening tools, as part of her graduate studies in education at Harvard University, where she earned an Ed.D. in 2004.

After the initial group interviews in New York and other cities, approximately 60 percent of the students are called back for more-traditional individual interviews. The number is winnowed to 20 or so who meet with college-admissions teams, which travel to the group’s six offices nationwide to choose the 10 to 12 students who will enroll as freshmen at their campuses that year and receive full-tuition scholarships.

(Posse staff members don’t gather information on the financial status of nominated students, and it is up to the colleges and universities to set up additional financial-aid packages for room, board, and other expenses for students as needed.)

New Measures

While the students chosen may or may not have stratospheric test scores, they possess other qualities that may be as important in navigating undergraduate life. And because Posse scholars tend to mirror the demographics of the urban areas they hail from, they help colleges and universities achieve a more diverse student population.

In the wake of the 2003 Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action in higher education, many selective colleges and universities nationwide have sought out more-holistic approaches — such as Posse’s — to achieving socioeconomic and ethnic diversity on campus that are not based on quotas.

“In this country, diversity has somehow become a synonym for minority,” says Ms. Bial, “and we don’t use it that way. Posse doesn’t screen for race, but for leadership; it’s a merit-based scholarship given by our partner colleges.”

“By having white and Latino and black and Asian and Indian kids in the same group, having kids of different religions, different politics, different genders and sexual orientations, by having that as the definition of diversity, we include everyone in the conversation.”

After a freshman “posse” for a campus is chosen, the scholars meet each other for the first time and embark on an eight-month intensive training program. The students meet once a week after school with their peers, Posse staff members, and trained volunteers for a series of workshops that coach them on academic preparation, cross-cultural communication, conflict resolution, and other skills.

Says Ms. Bial: “Posse kids know they have to sit in front, they have to meet their professors and know them, they have to raise their hand in class, they have to get to class on time — if they do nothing else, they should at least be doing that.”

Barbara Pollard, an arts administrator in New York, began volunteering last spring as a writing coach, meeting once a month with a contingent of 12 students going to Dickinson College, in Carlisle, Pa.

“It was amazing to see how they gelled and matured and looked out for each other,” says Ms. Pollard. “Some were more outgoing, and some more quiet, but each brought a special quality to the group.”

Ms. Pollard says she helped her group with time-management skills, as well as how to avoid plagiarism, write a research paper complete with footnotes and bibliography, and gain “other skills they’ll need as soon as they walk in the door” at their college.

Once on campus, the posse is paired with a faculty mentor who meets with the group once a week and one-on-one with students every two weeks during their freshman and sophomore years.

The formula seems to work: More than 90 percent of Posse scholars currently graduate, far higher than the national average of approximately 50 percent of students entering baccalaureate institutions.

In addition, says Ms. Bial, about six in 10 Posse alumni have either completed a graduate degree or are currently in graduate school. This year, four Posse scholars received Fulbright Scholarships and others won numerous academic and community-service awards.

Moreover, the Posse Foundation has lined up an array of organizations to provide scholars with internships — including Bloomberg, the Conservation Law Foundation, Lehman Brothers, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, MTV Networks, Simon & Schuster, and WorldTeach — that often lead to jobs after college.

“We’re not pointing our scholars in any one direction,” says Ms. Bial, “and they’re going to have very diverse interests when they enter the work force, so you’re going to see them as top researchers and doctors, as lawyers, and working for big finance companies, but also for big nonprofits.”

Humble Start

For the first 10 years of its existence, the group recruited only students from New York, beginning with five scholars who attended Vanderbilt University in 1989. Until it received its tax-exempt status in 1994, says Ms. Bial, “we were squatting in free office space given us by the College Board,” which also acted as its fiscal sponsor.

“We had one computer and when student nominations would start to come in, I’d have a yellow pad and I’d write them down,” she says, laughing. “We had to borrow everything, and I can’t even tell you how it feels to walk in now and be in 14,000 square feet of space on Wall Street, across from the New York Stock Exchange, with our name stenciled on the wall.”

Posse didn’t open its second chapter, in Boston, until 1999. “It took us 10 years to develop our program to a place where we thought this is perfect, or as good as it gets,” says Ms. Bial.

Since then, the organization has grown exponentially, and now has 80 employees working at six chapters.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in Battle Creek, Mich., was among the group’s first big grant makers, and Posse’s relationship with Kellogg continues to this day: In May 2006, the foundation awarded the organization a three-year, $3.3-million grant to expand to new cities and recruit additional colleges to serve as partners.

Other large donors include the Goldman Sachs Foundation, which gave $1-million to start up Posse’s Los Angeles chapter, and the Sallie Mae Fund, which contributed $1-million to open the Washington office, as well as a $5-million challenge grant for endowment. Last year, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, in Atlanta, awarded Posse $860,000 to open its newest chapter, in Atlanta.

The group’s board members have also been instrumental in the fiscal success of the group.

Timothy H. Ubben, who serves as vice chair of Posse’s Board of Directors, solicited friends and colleagues in the Chicago metropolitan area to put together $1-million to open an office there. In addition, after Posse matched Sallie Mae’s $5-million grant, Mr. Ubben, the retired founder and chairman of Lincoln Capital Management, and his wife, Sharon, donated $10-million to the group, its largest gift ever, creating an endowment of $20-million.

And, in at least one case, working with Posse is a family affair: Mr. Ubben’s son Jeffrey, founder and managing partner of ValueAct Capital, in San Francisco, will become board chair early next year.

He will succeed Michael Ainslie, a private investor and former president and director of Sotheby’s Holdings, who has served as chair since 1994 and helped oversee Posse’s evolution from a grass-roots effort to an organization with an $8-million budget.

Despite her group’s achievements, Ms. Bial isn’t resting on her laurels, but rather setting ambitious goals for Posse’s future.

By the year 2020, she hopes to see Posse operating chapters in 10 cities, recruiting 1,000 new scholars a year, supporting 4,000 students on campus, and working with 80 colleges and universities. She says the group is in talks with 30 institutions, and has a “prospect list” of at least 100.

Just as important, she says, is the fact that by 2020 there will be more than 7,000 Posse alumni in the work force. “We’re looking at a country with radically changing demographics, so whites are no longer the majority in the biggest cities, and when we look at who has access to the most and the best opportunities, those are the people who graduate from the top schools,”says Ms. Bial.

Yet “we’re still graduating too homogeneous a group of people from the best schools. So in our own small way, we’re helping create a group of people who will be able to make decisions at the tables in corporate America or in education or in social-service agencies who really represent all the voices in this country.”