MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name

BloomPACT - Empowering the Hispanic Community

One-line solution summary.

BloomPACT is a marketplace connecting Hispanic high school & college students with bilingual school counselors to make it easy to apply for college applications & scholarships.

Elevator pitch

What is your solution?

BloomPACT is a platform that connects Hispanic high school and college students with professional bilingual counselors to get the guidance and support they need to understand and apply for college and scholarships in a more affordable way.

The platform allows students and their parents to create an account, find a bilingual counselor and book a virtual appointment to answer questions, discover career paths and colleges, apply for scholarships, and help them write and translate their essays. Students pay only for what they need.

What specific problem are you trying to solve?

Hispanics are the youngest and fastest-growing population group in the United States. Currently, there are 3 million Hispanic students in high school and 4 million in college, but only 11% graduate and attain a bachelor’s degree compared with 23.7% of White adults. Their educational attainment levels are low and they are one of the biggest underrepresented minority groups in the U.S.

Hispanic students face many complex barriers such as:

Lack of English language and English writing skills. If they can’t write, they can’t apply for scholarships and afford tuition to attend college. The Hispanic community is staying behind.
No support and guidance throughout the college application and scholarship process. Nationally, the average student-to-school-counselor ratio is 335:1. One counselor is not enough and counselors do not have the time to help each student. First-generation students have less support and guidance from family members as they go through college because they do not understand the American education system.
Current market solutions are too expensive and most of the Hispanic community can’t afford to pay, they are one of the ethnic groups facing the highest poverty rates.

By addressing many of these complex barriers that Hispanic students face, we can increase their social mobility, the ability to achieve economic prosperity and obtain higher representation in the workplace.

Who does your solution serve? In what ways will the solution impact their lives?

We are serving the Hispanic community. One of the largest and most underserved demographic groups in the U.S. with the highest poverty rates.

Specifically, Hispanic high school and college students. We identified different segments of Hispanic students:

Students who cross the U.S.-Mexico border every day to attend school. They lack English language and writing skills to apply for scholarships, college application knowledge and guidance. They can't apply for financial aid due to taxes issues.
First-time college students in the U.S. who don't understand the American education system (and their families). They are alone in the college application process and they lack school counseling help.
Immigrant students from Latin America who can't apply for financial aid to pursue higher education and stay stagnant. They are afraid to ask for help due to their legal status.
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students who graduate from high school but whose legal status doesn't allow them to get financial aid and pursue higher education. They need scholarships but they lack English language skills.

Our platform will provide better accessibility to students who may be barely discovering whether they want to pursue higher education and help counselors create an extra revenue stream & gain more experience.

What steps have you taken to understand the needs of the population you want to serve?

We initially started researching this problem because it was a problem that we experienced when we were in high school.

We then conducted 60 interviews with high school and college students living in the U.S. Mexican border and 5 focus groups with Hispanic senior high school students applying for college. After conducting primary and secondary research, we found out that many Hispanic students do not pursue higher education because they find it difficult mostly due to language barriers, lack of guidance and knowledge of the American education system, and inability to pay for college.

Which aspects of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Improving financial and economic opportunities for all (Economic Prosperity)

Our solution's stage of development:

Concept: An idea being explored for its feasibility to build a product, service, or business model based on that idea

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution—in other words, what have you accomplished to date?

To date, most of our time has been spent on market research, we will be launching an MVP very quickly with simple tools like Google Form where we manually match up students with counselors.

Where our solution team is headquartered or located:

El Paso, TX, USA

Team Lead:

Jessica Tarin