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Penn to partner with Posse Foundation

Beginning next year, the University of Pennsylvania will partner with a foundation that handpicks high-achieving students from poor urban backgrounds to attend highly selective colleges.

Beginning next year, the University of Pennsylvania will partner with a foundation that handpicks high-achieving students from poor urban backgrounds to attend highly selective colleges.

Officials are expected to announce today that Penn will be the first Ivy League school to partner with the Posse Foundation, a New York City organization that selects top students, gives them extra support, and helps them form a "posse" of students from similar backgrounds to navigate their way through college together.

The 20-year-old foundation has a high success rate: 90 percent of its scholars graduate from college. It gives students who might not otherwise apply to top-tier schools a way to get there.

That's a fine fit for Penn, said Eric Furda, dean of admissions.

"We need to make sure that students who have the ability and the inclination are setting their geographic sights on Philadelphia and Penn," Furda said.

The Posse initiative is in addition to Penn's new partnership with Questbridge, another national program that will send 64 impoverished high-achieving students next semester.

What's different about Posse is that students come in a group from one geographic area.

Penn's Posse scholars will come from the Miami-Dade School District. Officials will begin recruiting there next month, with an eye toward eight to 12 Posse students' enrolling at Penn in the fall of 2010.

Posse has already partnered with 33 schools nationwide, including Bryn Mawr, Bucknell, and Franklin and Marshall. If Posse applicants are admitted, the school gives them full-tuition scholarships.

Penn president Amy Gutmann has made expanding access to a Penn education one of her priorities, and when Posse came to the university to explore a partnership, Gutmann was very interested, Furda said.

"We have to make sure our message gets out more broadly," Furda said. "If you're at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, the reality is, Penn is affordable."

The Miami-Dade partnership will also help Penn attract more students from a booming section of the country.

"The southeast parts of the United States really stand out demographically as a growth area, and it's one that we need to cultivate so college-bound students know more about Penn," Furda said.

Historically, Posse students are exactly what Penn wants, he said.

"They've really become positive forces and leaders on campuses," Furda said.

Deborah Bial, founder and chief executive, formed Posse after a student told her, "I never would have dropped out of college if I had my posse with me."

Yesterday, she said bringing an Ivy League university on board was "unbelievably exciting."

Bial hailed Gutmann and Furda for "getting it."

"They see this partnership as a way to make a statement about how important it is to build community, and to recruit leaders from backgrounds that are really diverse," Bial said.

The Posse Foundation has had 2,650 scholars in its 20-year history, and by 2020, that number is expected to climb to 6,000, Bial said.

"They're going to be rock stars out there," said Bial - a powerful new network, not an old boys' club. "They're going to be the leaders that we need, in every field, and they're going to represent the voices of all Americans."