A Can’t-Lose VC Opportunity: Getting Poor Kids Into College

VCs on a Quest

With few safe bets anymore, some Silicon Valley venture capitalists are putting their money behind what they believe will prove a can’t-lose proposition: backing a program that helps land gifted but low-income high-school students in the best universities.

Wall St. Journal

The Quest Scholars program http://questscholars.stanford.edu/home/home.shtml has attained almost a perfect record in getting these high-school graduates enrolled in places such as Stanford and Harvard, and keeping them there, since starting up in 1994 in Palo Alto, Calif. But the program has expanded its reach nationally, and a bevy of venture capitalists — looking for new places to invest now that the tech market has crashed — have stepped up to help with costs.

Last year, for example, Benchmark Capital co-founder Bob Kagle donated $110,000 to the program, while Matt Ocko, managing director of Archimedes Capital, donated $50,000. In all, Quest officials say VCs accounted for about $398,000, or 55%, of their program’s $719,000 in cash contributions in 2001. By contrast, they say, there was almost no VC involvement in Quest as of three years ago.

"I can’t imagine an investment with a higher return than Quest," says Mr. Kagle, a partner in the firm that helped launch the online commerce titan eBay Inc.

Indeed, Quest has outperformed most other college-placement programs for disadvantaged youth, managing to get all 195 of the young people who have graduated from its summertime classes enrolled into universities. Several have gained distinctions such as becoming Rhodes Scholars or gaining admittance to Harvard Medical School. The program’s founders, Michael and Ana McCullough, credit their success to elaborate screening for applicants, as well as making sure to closely follow them through all stages of the college process. The program culls 42 students each year from about 2,300 applicants across the country, based on test scores as well as intangibles such as character and drive.

So many good candidates are turned away that the McCulloughs next year say they plan to open their database to a network of other college recruiters, in a proposition called Questbridge, which is designed to increase the number of students who can receive placement help.