When Brilliant Pathways launched 35 years ago, a college degree was widely seen as the surest path to opportunity. Families across the country believed in its promise. Our work focused on demystifying the process for students from underserved communities—especially the more than 25% who would be the first in their families to attend college. We guided them through applications, financial aid and the admissions process, believing—as most did—that if you got into college, good results would follow.
But today, that belief has faded.
Seventy percent of students and families now question the value of higher education. Young men, in particular, are falling significantly behind in educational attainment.
In 1990, students often earned a degree first, then figured out what to do with it. Today, this has been reversed. Starting as early as first grade, students in our programs gain real-world career exposure that helps them understand not just how to go to college, but why.
From our earliest days, we’ve set about changing that.
Over the past 35 years, we’ve worked with more than 110,000 young men and women—15,000 last year alone. Working side-by-side with educators in both cities and rural school districts, we systematically break down the barriers that so often discourage students from choosing higher education. We introduce students to mentors. We enlist corporate partners to give our students a chance to expand their horizons. We lead thousands of students a year on college and university visits. Many times, it’s the first time these students ever set foot on a campus.
But it’s not the last. Ultimately, more than 90 percent of our Brilliant Pathways scholars pursue a postsecondary education.
Decades in the Making
After 35 years at the helm of Brilliant Pathways, Founder and CEO Rick Dalton officially passed the baton to Tara Smith. Tara joined the organization as a recent college graduate 22 years ago and has grown with the Essex, NY-based nonprofit ever since.
This transition offers a moment to reflect—
Not just on how far we’ve come, but also on how much the landscape of college and career readiness has shifted since our work began.
With over 20 years of experience at Brilliant Pathways, Tara provides overall management and support for college and career readiness programs in K-12 schools. She has developed high-impact corporate volunteer programs, led the transformation in the way students experience college and career readiness and skill development through the use of interactive game-play activities, and has created hundreds of resources that build and strengthen mentoring programs, pathway knowledge, and Essential Skill development.
College and career readiness
At Brilliant Pathways, we’ve always led with an unflinching conviction that a college education is the surest path to financial security. And with millions of high-paying jobs projected to go unfilled in coming years, underserved communities need to do a better job of sending their children to college. It’s a matter of economic survival—for the students, and the places they live.
But we’ve also learned that getting to college is just the start. It’s not enough to show a student how to get to college; they need the skills and knowledge to thrive there. In recent years, we’ve placed an increased emphasis on college and career readiness so students are prepared for the increased workload and responsibility they’ll face on campus. In many of the communities we work, counselors are responsible for too many students to do effective college counseling. It’s why we’ve committed to training 5,000 college and career readiness advisors in the coming years, to handle this important work.