I’m a recent graduate of the MIT who is truly passionate about working in higher education and helping disadvantaged students feel prepared and more confident when they navigate through college. I was excited to come across your Upward Bound program and to see that my passions aligned with the services you provide to high school students in the Oakland community, which is why I am writing to express my interest in this position. With the combination of my experience mentoring and supporting undergraduates, creating programs to support first-generation and low-income students, and my experience working as a residential facilitator for the MIT Office of Minority Education, I believe I would be a strong fit for this position. While at MIT, I dedicated my time to organizations through which I could support my peers with extensive knowledge of various support programs and offices on campus. For example, as an academic advisor for the Office of Undergraduate Advising and Academic Programming, I guided 12 freshmen through their transition to college by listening to their concerns and forwarding them to the appropriate tutoring services they were struggling academically. I served a similar role in three additional contexts, such as, an academic chair of my living …show more content…
As president of CASE, I pioneered programs to assist the undergraduate low-income and first-generation community. Through CASE, I directed a new initiative that paired MIT staff and faculty members with approximately 20 low-income graduating students’ families who were unable to afford lodging during MIT’s commencement weekend. I also kickstarted an initiative that summarized and publicized unknown, existing programs for low-income students on the CASE website to ensure low-income students knew of every accessible resource on