UPchieve

The Elevate Prize’s funding and resources will support UPchieve’s capacity to tackle two of our biggest challenges: 1) expanding our reach to more students and 2) increasing our impact on each individual student served. 

We’ll leverage the Prize’s funding and marketing expertise to develop and execute a growth marketing strategy, which will enable us to reach thousands more students via SEO, Google Ads, and content marketing. We’re also eager to use The Elevate Prize’s mentorship and support to develop our data collection and utilization strategy to ensure UPchieve maximizes our impact on students’ academic outcomes.

Examples of what winning The Elevate Prize would help us achieve by the end of 2021:

- Double our daily student sign up rate from ~50 students to ~100 students

- Improve conversion rates along all parts of the student acquisition funnel

- Produce our first case study measuring our impact on student learning

- Modify our product roadmap with a lens towards collecting better data and improving student outcomes

Vision & Purpose

We want to live in a world where you don’t need wealthy or educated parents to achieve your goals. We’ll make this a reality by democratizing access to academic support so all students have an equal opportunity to finish high school and attend college.

Founding story

I was raised in a low-income household by a single mom who immigrated here from Cuba. As a result of limited access to academic support, I attended a local community college and it took me six years of working while taking classes to finish my Bachelor’s degree. After college, I secured a job at J.P. Morgan, earning over twice as much as my mom had ever made in her life. I started UPchieve to give more students like me the opportunity to achieve upward mobility. 

Goals

By 2030, we hope to provide all 8 million low-income HS students in the US with free, 24/7 access to live academic support. Every low-income student who comes to UPchieve looking for help will be able to connect with a live, certified tutor in under 5 minutes, no matter what time it is, what device they’re using, or what subject they need help with. 

The Problem

14% of low-income 10th graders will earn their Bachelor’s degree within 6 years, compared to 60% of their high income peers. The “academic achievement gap” impacts 8 million low-income high school students in the U.S.

In addition to attending public schools with fewer resources, low-income students receive less academic support after school and in their homes. Even if a student is fortunate enough to attend a school which offers after-school tutoring, part-time jobs and family commitments often prevent them from focusing on schoolwork until later in the evening. 61% of low-income students have parents who have never been to college. In immigrant families, parents may also lack fluency in English.

Our Solution

UPchieve levels the playing field for low-income students by making free, live academic support available 24/7, from any device. Our online platform currently offers math tutoring, science tutoring, college counseling, and standardized test prep to 8,000 low-income students. After making a help request on our platform, students are paired with a live “Academic Coach” in our virtual classroom in an average of 5 minutes. UPchieve’s Academic Coaches are volunteers who we recruit, train, and certify to provide high-quality tutoring or college advice.

Scalability

UPchieve delivers the most scalable solution to improving education for low-income students. Our virtual, on-demand model makes it easy to: 1) reach students across the country and 2) sustainably recruit thousands of volunteers. By leveraging volunteers to provide academic support, we keep our costs extremely low. For example, we can provide one student with an entire year of unlimited support for $10.

On-Demand Availability

We’re the only nonprofit providing on-demand academic support to students. By “on-demand,” we mean that students do not need to pre-schedule their tutoring sessions. Most students don’t know ahead of time when they’re going to get stuck on their homework or have a question about college. Being able to speak to someone any time they need it is game-changing, especially for students who may not always be able to prioritize their schoolwork.

Student Empowerment

UPchieve’s model is specifically designed to put students in control of their own learning. We let students determine: 1) when they need help, 2) what they need help on, and 3) how much help they need. In addition to increasing students’ agency and self-efficacy, our model is the most efficient option available for both students and volunteers.

Our impact

UPchieve helps students access the personalized academic support they need to excel in high school and apply to college. Our timely academic support services help students earn better grades, pass classes they would have failed otherwise, prepare more competitive college applications, and increase their self-efficacy and enthusiasm for learning.

Outcomes so far

On average, one tutoring session on UPchieve increases students’ subject-matter comprehension by 61%, from “I don’t understand it at all” or a 1.8 out of 4, to “I know how to do this on my own” or 2.9 out of 4. We’ve heard from students themselves how important our free academic support has been during remote learning. For example:

- “Without UPchieve, I wouldn’t have passed my junior year.” - Josiah

- “I’ve learned more math on UPchieve than I have in my whole school life.” - Esmerelda

- “I went from a D to an A thanks to the amazing tutors!” - Michaela

Future plans

Some of the ways we plan to increase our impact in the future include: offering more topics on our platform, expanding our volunteer training, investing in online outreach to students, and making our platform more accessible to different student populations.