College Choice Support Services

College life comes with its own challenges for students in foster care, as they often struggle to fit in and keep up academically with their more advantaged peers. College Choice Support Services – using The Foundling’s Fostering College Success Initiative model – provides comprehensive financial, academic, and social supports to help young people in foster care across all of New York City’s foster care system succeed in college and beyond.

Since 2016, our Fostering College Success Initiative model has built upon The Foundling’s unique capacity for supporting the educational achievement of older adolescents in foster care. This programming provides a wide range of supports – academic, social, financial, and professional – to prepare students to graduate from college with a four-year degree, ensuring a better future. Participants are supported by College Success Advisors who are deeply in touch with and trained to respond to the issues that this unique population faces. The program also includes career counseling and academic support that is provided by a team of tutors who ensure that each student is prepared to pass their classes, develop effective study habits, choose a major, and implement a long-term academic plan.

College Choice Support Services is operated in collaboration with the Administration of Children’s Services, and works closely with the City University of New York (CUNY) and other universities.