
Challenge
KIPP Metro Atlanta's counselors were stretched thin — searching for scholarships, tracking deadlines, guiding essays, and following up with 193 seniors across a school year. Students had ambition and grades, but no consistent system to match them to the right opportunities or keep applications moving. Without a scalable way to surface awards, coach students through applications, and report results to leadership, too much money was being left on the table.
Approach
Over three years, we grew the partnership from seminars, to platform access for the broader community, to full-platform access for every senior. In AY 2025–26, all 193 KIPP seniors were onboarded to ScholarPro with personalized scholarship matching, application support, essay editing, and real-time reporting for counselors and administrators. Coaching leaned on one clear insight from the data: students who submitted 5 or more applications won at an 86% rate, versus 64% below that threshold — a 22-point difference that shaped how we pushed the cohort.
Results
$28M scholarships won
100% of students reached
1 in 2 seniors won an award
1601 hours of counselor time saved
"We are so thankful to Securing Degrees! Our scholars have won so many scholarships through this partnership. Don’t miss out on what Victoria and her team have to offer! Thank you Securing Degrees for providing turnkey resources to our scholars and families. We are changing lives and I love every bit of it!" -Jodeci Acosta-Gorman, MA (College Access & Postsecondary Success Leader)


