Giving Compass' Take:

· First-generation students are four times more likely to drop out of school, but this app is about to level the playing field. Forbes talks with Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca, creator of DREAMer’s Roadmap, about the purpose behind her app and how it has helped over 20,000 students get to college, build a support system, and connect with other students.

· Why is the drop out rate of first-generation students so high? How has this app increased the retention rate of first-generation students? 

· First-generation college students face special risks in schools.

Sometimes in life, you’re dealt a hand that makes you want to fold without even trying. For Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca, she was dealt a hand that stacked odds against her from childhood right up until graduating high school.

At age 4, she, along with her 10 other siblings, immigrated to the United States from Mexico. Unlike the rest of her siblings, she was able to pick up English and because of her fluency, this allowed her to be the only one in her family to finish high school in the United States.

Eager to take the next step in life, when she went to her guidance counselor to get “guidance” she was practically shown the door when they told her “people like you” don’t go to college. By “people like her” (a phrase she unconsciously started to label herself as too) they were referring to the fact that she was an undocumented immigrant-- despite graduating with honors, the likelihood of her going to college was slim to none. Primarily, she would not be able to afford college without aid because she lacked legal status, her counselor had no answers for her on how she’d be able to overcome this barrier and instead told her, the more common path was to drop out and go to work instead.

While working cash jobs such as cleaning homes and taking care of children, a serendipitous moment happened when someone from her church told her that she could qualify for in-state tuition since a legislation in California allowed undocumented students to obtain lower tuition. She also soon found out that there are a ton of local non-profits that give scholarships to undocumented students. Why hadn’t her counselor known about any of this?

In 2015, Sarahi won a competition by the MacArthur Foundation that granted her $100K to build a mobile app to create greater access and awareness to scholarships. She called it DREAMer’s Roadmap. In April 2016 she launched the app which was a database of resources for students to learn about scholarships that suited their background and situation, such as TheDream.us that provides full-ride scholarships for dreamers, or the Assend Educational Fund that grants up to $20K in scholarships to immigrant students. Since launch, DREAMer’s Roadmap has helped over 20,000 students go to college, all through organic growth and word of mouth. Success stories are often shared throughout social media.

Read the full article about first-generation students by Jaclyn Ling at Forbes.