 The Lasko College Prep Program is a program of the Jewish Employment and Vocational Service (JEVS) for Jewish high school juniors preparing to enter college.
As Penny Kardon, Director of Career Strategies for JEVS, explains,
The program is for current juniors whose families meet a certain income eligibility requirement. This is funded by the Lasko Family Foundation, and it's in its seventh year. It gives students an opportunity to work three days a week in the Jewish community, at a Jewish organization, and two days a week they come to JEVS Human Services' Career Strategies Department, in the Youth Services.
More after the jump.
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| High School juniors, adds Kardon, "get SAT tutoring, college advising, and they have an opportunity to visit two college campuses, and they start writing their essays for the college application. We work with the family on financial aid, we help them get scholarships, and they are matched with a mentor from the Franklin C. Ash program for Jewish college students. These are kids who are already gone through the whole college application procedure, and they help them negotiate the whole college application process."
This mentoring, says Kardon, entails the "nitty-gritty" issues of "What if you don't like your room-mate? Or how did they pick their college? Sometimes the mentees visit their mentors in college during the year, and it gives the students a great opportunity to see (how) very successful students negotiate their college application process."
The Lasko College Prep Program, adds Kardon, is also great for the community because "It places these kids in a Jewish organization three days a week, and they actually do the things that sometimes we don't have the time to do, (like) data entry, answering phones, filing, working with kids, doing art projects, creating a brochure if the student has some particular graphics talents. So it's a great opportunity for the community as well."
"It's a one-year program," adds Rhonda Cohen, Coordinator of Community Relations at JEVS, "they start off in the summer, before they enter their senior year. That's when they spend their three days a week at the Jewish placement, and that's when they get their SAT tutoring, that's when they get their mentor from the Franklin C. Ash college program. Once the summer ends the program continues, and they are required to work with our educational counselors until they have successfully get into college, and we work with the parents.
The Lasko program, adds Cohen, "has made the difference for families that don't have that luxury of spending money on a college consultant or an SAT tutor. This is for low-income families in the Jewish community, and we are very proud to say we have a ninety-nine percent success rate, in seven years, of getting students into college."
Application is available online.
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