Last but certainly not least, how about the amazing YES Prep in Houston. At the end of this email is an article about the 43 seniors at YES Prep North Central cranking on their college applications:

It was Deadline Day at YES Prep North Central, the day college applications were supposed to be finished, the day essays, personal statements and a seemingly endless series of forms needed to be slipped into white envelopes, ready for submission.

The day the school's first graduating class would take one leap closer to college.

The seniors inside Room A121 were sprinting, scurrying and stumbling to the finish line. They hunched over plastic banquet tables, brows furrowed and eyed fixed on the screens of Dell laptop computers. Keyboards clattered, papers rustled and sighs swept across the room like waves of nervous energy.

So much was riding on this.

The reputation of a charter school built around the mission of sending every student to college. The hopes of parents who wanted more for their children than they had attained. The expectations of younger siblings, schoolmates and friends hungry for role models.

And above all, the dreams of 43 North Central seniors determined to turn stereotypes and statistics upside-down.

But first, those applications had to sparkle.

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January 4, 2010