Giving Compass' Take:

• EdSource details a program at USC that brings bright underprivileged students to campus for three weeks in order to tackle obstacles that hold some back from pursuing elite colleges and universities, such as low self-assessment.

• How can we support more programs such as this? In what other ways can we reach out to high-achieving teens from disadvantaged backgrounds with college counseling and financial aid?

• Here's how to fund higher education philanthropy.

While many campus and nonprofit programs give high school students a taste of college life, Bovard stands out by bringing low-income high achievers on campus for three weeks in a university supported program. It is named for Emma Bovard, one of the first students at USC’s founding in 1880 who later in life advocated on behalf of women at the university and immigrants in California.

This year roughly half of the students were Hispanic and more than a quarter were African-American. The program recruits nationally but 54 of the scholars came from California. Half came from families whose household income is $25,000 or less.

But conspiring against Castillo and her Bovard peers are the common pitfalls for children emerging from low-income homes: limited interaction with high school counselors, few enrichment opportunities and little confidence they belong at elite colleges like Harvard, Stanford and UC Berkeley.

Rosana Maris Arias, 17, a Bovard scholar this summer from La Puente, Calif., said the lack of confidence comes from a fear of “thinking that I’m not good enough to get into schools like that.”

That fear can compel students to attend colleges with fewer academic resources, less financial aid and much lower graduation rates than the more competitive schools. And they can also miss out on the network of peers who typically attend the top-tier schools.

Read the full article about high-performing, low-income students striving for the nation's top schools by Mikhail Zinshteyn at edsource.org.