When Denise Harris was feeling nervous about applying for a competitive college scholarship, she turned to the staffers she’d worked with as a participant in the University of Chicago’s Collegiate Scholars Program (CSP). The CSP team talked her through the process, made sure she had completed everything required for the application, and helped her prepare for her interview with the scholarship committee. “They ended up easing my mind about it,” Harris, a senior at Whitney Young high school who lives in North Lawndale, said. This fall, thanks to that successful application, Harris will attend Notre Dame University on a full scholarship.
Established in 2003 after the UChicago Consortium on School Research found that highly qualified Chicago Public School high school students were underreaching in their college applications, CSP is a three-year enrichment program that prepares talented students from diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds like Harris for admission and success at highly selective colleges.
Harris joined the program as a high school freshman and was immediately struck by how different it felt taking classes and spending time on a university campus instead of in her CPS classrooms. From the pre-pandemic overnight stay in UChicago housing at the start of the program to the lively discussions in CSP classrooms, the experience has given Harris a more open mindset, she says, and built her confidence that she could tackle any challenges college might present.
“I was nervous coming in, I thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it, but I also realized I should trust the abilities that the CSP staff saw in me as I was applying,” Harris said. “I felt very comfortable after my first day there.”
That change was clear to Harris’ mother, Latrice, as well. Latrice Harris says in addition to the confidence her daughter gained being exposed to college classes and faculty, she appreciated the clear expectations the program set and the way they kept her involved as a parent. CSP also pushed Denise to stay on track and connected to teachers and friends, Latrice says, even when the pandemic upended her and her classmates’ schooling and social lives.
“I feel like not only Denise, but a lot of students, missed out on opportunities to socialize, network, and be in that kind of classroom setting,” she said. “I feel like being a part of the CSP program was able to offset that.”
CSP classes where instructors challenge students and encourage them to voice their opinion have also made an impact on Harris. She has found herself carrying that experience back to her high school classrooms, she says, by intentionally interacting more and building stronger relationships with her teachers.
At Notre Dame, Harris plans to pursue psychology—a subject she fell in love with after taking CSP’s Intro to Psychology course—and further embrace the thoughtful approach to learning she honed working with her CSP teachers and classmates: “I really appreciate that they created that environment for me.”
