It’s my pleasure to welcome you to the new uAspire website! We are excited to launch our new page, just in time for the start of our college affordability advising in high schools across Boston, Springfield, Lawrence and Miami.
And with a new website, we’re also proud to enter this school year under our new name – uAspire. After 27 years of being known as ACCESS, this is a big change for our organization. But our new name also gives us a new opportunity – a renewed commitment to our work to make college an affordable reality for the students we serve. We envision a day when a college degree is determined by a student’s effort, accomplishments, and hard work – not by the ability to pay for tuition, books, or room and board.
Our new name as uAspire is really the culmination of a change we’ve been making over the last several years. When we started as ACCESS in 1985, we focused primarily on helping students complete the FAFSA. This is still a key part of our work, but today we do so much more. Now, we work with students before they even get to high school, helping them prepare for how to pay for college. We complete FAFSAs during senior year but also review award letters and advocate for more aid from colleges. And we continue supporting students once they get into college, so that students don’t just get in – they graduate with a degree.
We’ve also grown considerably since our earliest days as ACCESS. 20 years ago, we would serve about 1,000 high school seniors in Boston and call it a successful year. Last year, uAspire served more than 11,000 students and families across three cities in Massachusetts – Boston, Springfield, and Lawrence. This year, we will launch uAspire Miami in 5 high schools, with a goal of serving 2,000 students.
But what hasn’t changed is the impact in a young person’s life when a college degree, once out or reach due to the cost, is brought a little bit closer. uAspire plays a part in this by providing our students with the knowledge, the support, and the advocacy they need to make a college degree affordable.
Thanks for visiting, and stay tuned for more updates throughout the year from uAspire.
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