By Ana Gomez Salcido
Reality Changers hosted a visit to UCSD Academic Connections, where 100 of its students experienced college as high school students.
UCSD Academic Connections is a three-week program where students have the opportunity to live the collegiate experience by taking a college level course and living in UC San Diego dorms.
The UCSD Academic Connections pre-college program connects high achieving high school students with college subject matter courses led by graduate students in a wide array of academic disciplines, renowned UCSD faculty researchers and subject matter experts in the field.
There are over 20 class offerings. These include Introduction to Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Exploring Youth Subculture: A Sociological Perspective, and Photo Essay: Seeing San Diego Through Image and Text.
“Reality Changers focuses on the highest potential youth living in the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city,” says Christopher Yanov, Founder and President of Reality Changers. “What happens is that by raising their grades from below a 2.0, to say a 3.5 and above, going to UC San Diego over the summer after 9th, 10th, and 11th grade for three weeks, taking college classes, believing and becoming convinced they can succeed at a college level – the sky’s the limit.”
To date, Reality Changers has provided scholarships for over 700 students to attend UCSD’s Academic Connections. The program not only shows inner-city students that higher education is attainable, but also gives these students the opportunity to explore potential college majors and career paths.
Reality Changers started after Yanov worked as a youth director near downtown San Diego from 1996 to 2001. The majority of teens which he first worked with were involved with drugs and gangs, often leading to violence, vandalism, teen pregnancy, and even death.
To respond to this challenge, Reality Changers was created with just four students and $300 to its name. The organization is based on the principle that it is just not right that most inner-city students today know more people who have been shot or killed in the street than people who are on the road to college.
Nearly a decade and a half later, Reality Changers now serves nearly 1,000 youth from disadvantaged backgrounds every year. Reality Changers’ College Apps Academy course is available to 12th graders from all backgrounds.
The program’s 1,300 graduates – including 29 Gates Millennium Scholars – have now earned over $100,000,000 in scholarship from all sources. Reality Changers has begun to scale its programs so that this feat can be accomplished on an annual basis beginning in 2018.
Reality Changers believes that college changes everything, especially for low-income, inner-city youth; which is why their mission is to transform lives, schools, and communities by providing youth from disadvantaged backgrounds with the academic support, financial assistance, and leadership training to become first generation college students.