Our Results

An Unparalleled Record of Success with Low-Income Students

There is no other program in the United States that has more than two decades of comparable success in taking underserved children through the entire educational journey right through to college graduation.

High School and College Graduation Rates. Virtually all Wave-Makers who enter the ninth grade complete high school. All of our high school graduates go to college. Seventy percent are enrolled in four-year colleges and universities and 30 percent begin their college career at a two-year college with the goal of ultimately transferring to a four-year college. Even more remarkable, nearly two-thirds of our students graduate from four-year institutions, increasingly at some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges.

* California, African-American and Latino Students, 2006-2007
** African-Americans and Latinos in California aged 25 to 34
Note: Nearly 90 percent of Wave-Makers are African-American or Latino. All figures from Wave-Makers are cumulative.

Today, our cohorts of African-American and Latino students graduate from high school at twice the rate of their peers in California, and students who enter the program are many times more likely to enter and graduate from college than students from similar backgrounds nationwide.

Readiness Index. California’s College Readiness Index identifies the extent to which students have completed courses required to enter the rigorous University of California and California State University systems and are ready to succeed in public and private institutions nationwide. All Wave-Makers graduate from high school fully qualified to meet these high standards.

Raising the Bar on College Attendance. Each graduating class raises the bar for Making Waves enrollment at four-year institutions. In the most recent graduating class of Wave-Makers, 42 high school seniors in Richmond received a total of 181 letters of acceptance to four-year colleges. Some 88 percent of the class attended four-year institutions around the nation. Forty-seven percent were accepted to campuses in the highly selective University of California system, which accepts the top 12 percent of students in the state, even though Wave-Makers are in the bottom 15 percent of family income.

Where Wave-Makers Go to College. Wave-Makers have attended prominent academic institutions nationwide. This map shows some of the post-secondary schools Wave-Makers have attended.

Participation in Graduate School. Twenty-nine percent of the first cohort of graduates, called the "First Wave," have completed or are completing graduate work at such institutions as Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, UC Berkeley, UCLA's Anderson School of Management, and several medical schools. A number of Making Waves graduates have returned to our program on a full-time basis to help the next generation of students, and half of those have volunteered to contribute without compensation.