For Olivia Aguilar, the hardest part of college wasn’t the coursework — it was deciding to go at all. “When I was first faced with the possibility of going to college, I was terrified. I was lost. I didn’t know which direction to turn,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do.” Aguilar carried another […]

Every day Ashley Larios walks into Cedar Hill High School she helps students navigate the exact path she once feared she couldn’t walk herself. As a college admissions advisor at Cedar Hill High School and Cedar Hill Collegiate High School, Ashley now guides students through the college application process: FAFSA, scholarships, career exploration, transfer planning. […]

Nicole Dmitrejtschuk was not looking for someone to hand her a future. She was looking for a door. At seventeen, sitting in a senior-year class at Lakeview Centennial High School in Garland, the Venezuelan-born, first-generation college student already understood something most teenagers don’t: In this country, getting to college and paying for college are two […]

Figuring out what you want to do after high school is a lot of pressure. Everyone’s asking, and if your honest answer is “I don’t know yet,” that’s fine. But wouldn’t it feel good to start narrowing down your options? Dallas County Promise can help. We just launched a new tool called QuickPath to Work, […]

Kaylah read the Dallas County Promise scholarship requirements in high school and immediately assumed she didn’t qualify. She had done something most students hadn’t: she earned her associate’s degree while still in high school. That was the problem—or so she thought. “I thought I was ineligible because I thought you had to graduate high school […]

Graduating from high school is a major accomplishment and can often feel like the end of a long academic journey. However, high school graduation is only the first step of your transition to college enrollment. The summer following graduation is a critical time to prepare yourself for fall classes. Even if you feel done with […]