Let’s Get Ready Wins $500,000 from the American Giving Awards

Let’s Get Ready, a nonprofit organization devoted to expanding college access by providing free SAT preparation and college admissions guidance to low-income high school students, won second place and a prize of $500,000 on Saturday, December 10th in the first-ever American Giving Awards presented by CHASE. After competing against thousands of charities to become one of the five finalists, Let’s Get Ready competed for the first place one million dollar prize in the American Giving Awards, a combined effort of Chase, Dick Clark Productions and Intersport, aimed at encouraging national support and volunteerism for local charities.

Executive Director Lauri Novick accepted the award on behalf of the organization at the star-studded award show broadcast on the NBC Network. Let's Get Ready will utilize the $500,000 to expand programs and serve more students. “This award is huge for Let’s Get Ready,” said Novick. “It will enable us to nearly double our impact, sending 2,000 more low-income students through our program and on to college. It also heightens awareness of the monumental challenges under-served students face throughout the college admissions process, and the impact organizations like Let’s Get Ready have in leveling the playing field and thereby making college more accessible for these kids.”

Let’s Get Ready now runs 63 programs throughout the northeast, serving about 2,500 students with the assistance of 1,000 college volunteers. On average, these students see a 112 point improvement in their SAT scores and over 90% of Let’s Get Ready students go directly to college after high school.

The program has deep roots in Scarsdale, as it was founded by 1996 SHS grad Eugenie Lang Rosenthal, during her sophomore year at Harvard. She recognized the need to expand college access and enable more children in under-resourced schools to break the cycle of poverty by going to college. Like so many of her classmates from Scarsdale High School, Eugenie had taken a costly SAT prep course, had college-educated parents, attentive counselors, and the help of tutors when she needed help. Eugenie decided it was time for her and her peers to “let down the ladder” for another generation of students, especially those who did not have college-educated families, or SAT courses, and who struggled in schools where the average ratio of students to guidance counselors is 740:1, (the national public school average). So Eugenie called a group of her friends, contacted churches in Mount Vernon to find space and recruit students, and within two weeks of the idea’s conception, in the summer of 1997, there were 30 students and 10 volunteers in a Mount Vernon church basement doing SAT prep and college planning.

Soon after, Jeannie brought Let’s Get Ready to Harvard and then (with help from the College Board and the Samuel Huntington Fund) to New York City. Jeannie left the staff in 2005 to attend business school and start a family, but remains an active member of the Board of Directors (serving as Secretary and as part of the Program Committee).

“A student who goes to college can end poverty in their family forever” says Eugenie. Indeed, a 4-year college graduate, on average, earns more than $1 million more over their lifetime than someone with just a high school diploma, and their children are twice as likely to go to college. “There are many kids who want to college and are able, but the process is so complex” she explains. “By helping kids through that critical, intricate dance right at the end of high school, you not only change their lives, you can re-write the story of their family for generations.”

Many Scarsdale residents are currently involved in Let’s Get Ready, from serving on the Board of Directors, to tutoring for the SAT’s and acting as mentors during the college admissions process. The Board of Directors includes Scarsdale residents Stephen Karotkin, Dan Reingold, Gil Kemp, Evan Meyers, Ann Yaspan, and former Scarsdale resident Priscilla Natkins. Former Scarsdale resident Nancy Katz heads up a mentoring program that pairs college applicants with adult mentors who guide them through the college application process. Present and past mentors include Scarsdale’s Jon and Nancy Alderman, Anna Decker, Shelley and Richard Effman, Nancy Karotkin, Flo Wiener, Nancy Rubini, Bud Kroll, Susan Roth, Susan Friedman, Laura Nassau and Joanne Wallenstein. In addition, at college campuses around the northeast, college students from Scarsdale are tutoring local high school students to prepare them for their SAT’s.