HighSight’s mission is to provide scholarships, tutoring, mentoring, leadership development, and college readiness programs for students from low-income families attending private high schools in Chicago. This experience empowers our scholars to excel in high school and graduate from four-year colleges across the country.
HighSight's vision is to help young people realize their potential through successful high school completion and attendance at a selective post-secondary institution, helping to break the cycle of poverty for themselves and their families.
HighSight's History
In the spring of 1992, HighSight was founded to serve students from the Cabrini-Green housing project on Chicago’s Near North Side. Two volunteer tutors were determined to make a difference in the lives of the students, most of whom were encountering the ills of urban life and underachieving in high school. They recruited funders and tutors to provide scholarships and academic support for seven local students, helping them attend and graduate a local private high school, Holy Trinity High School.
After a few years of functioning entirely on a volunteer basis, in 1995 HighSight began life as its own tax-exempt organization. Since then, more than 1,000 scholars from under-resourced neighborhoods across Chicago have graduated from more than 20 quality private high schools throughout Chicago, served by five staff members and dozens of volunteers each year.
Now, for nearly 20 years, 100% have enrolled in college, and with HighSight’s guidance and support, each scholar has received at least a full-tuition college scholarship.
This HighSight Overview provides a description of HighSight’s programs, longer-term impact, and the trajectory we help our scholars achieve to improve outcomes for themselves and future generations of their families.
