Over $600K Awarded to 2022 SMASH Alumni
The SMASH College Program was established in Fall 2019 with the launch of Admit — a one-year college admission and exposure program for SMASH seniors in high school. At the time we offered our SMASH Academy alumni college application support through in-person workshops. However, with a fast-growing community, we needed a new and exciting approach.
Admit is SMASH’s approach to personalized college navigation, where SMASH seniors get access to dedicated college coaches, college application fee waivers, SMASH-exclusive scholarship & college visit opportunities, and much more to ensure they make more informed decisions about their futures. Since its establishment, Admit has coached 500+ seniors to navigate their way through finding a best-fit college, with 100% attending college.
Year over year, SMASH seniors state that access to financial aid and scholarships is their top need as they head to college. With this in mind, SMASH-exclusive scholarships were also established in 2019 to support our students’ pursuit of STEM degrees. To date, $2.4M in SMASH-exclusive scholarships has been awarded to alumni with over $600K being awarded this year alone. We have had the pleasure of partnering with corporate partners like Raytheon Technologies, Deloitte Foundation, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and university partners like Morehouse College, UC Davis, and UC Berkeley’s SEED Scholars Honors Program to offer SMASH-exclusive scholarships to our students as they persist and succeed through college and beyond.
Please join us in celebrating the 2022 cohort of SMASH Scholarship recipients!
SMASH Scholarship Highlights
Raytheon Technologies SMASH Scholarship — $800K awarded to 21 students since 2021
Deloitte Foundation SMASH — $25K awarded to 11 students since 2022
Lawrence Livermore National Security SMASH Scholarship — $6K awarded to 10 students since 2022
Partner-Managed Scholarships
SEED Scholars Honors Program at UC Berkeley — $96K awarded to 8 students since 2022
Walter A. Robinson SMASH Scholarship — $300K awarded to 27 students since 2021
Scholarship recipients also have the opportunity to participate in Persist — our newest program, established to support college first and second years as they transition to and through college. With 81% of our students intending to declare a STEM major (compared to the national average of 57%), our ultimate goal is to support SMASH alumni to obtain STEM degrees and ensure they are well-equipped to get internships and full-time job placements in STEM.
To learn more about our efforts to place underserved youth into STEM internships and jobs, visit our website to read more about our SMASH Rising and Career Insights programs.
The Future of College Programs & How You Can Support
In order to continue building pathways for underserved high school students to pursue and persist in STEM, we need your support to identify and establish more opportunities for scholarship funding. If you come across a scholarship, please add it to our running list of scholarships here. If you are interested in donating scholarship funds directly to SMASH, click here.
Thank you in advance for your support and congratulations again to our 2022 SMASH scholarship recipients — best of luck to you as you enter your first year of college!