Northeastern launches full-ride scholarship program for Oakland public school students – The Huntington News

This year, for the first time, a group of select high school seniors who graduated from Oakland Unified School District high schools and Pell Grant-eligible residents of Oakland, California were awarded the Northeastern Oakland Opportunity Scholarship, which covers the full costs of four-year tuition, housing and dining.
The scholarship, which will be granted to 10 eligible students each year starting in fall 2025 who apply and are admitted as first-year students to Northeastern University Oakland, covers nearly all tuition and fees, which would otherwise cost roughly $85,000 per year before aid. Scholarship recipients must begin their first semester on the Oakland campus but can choose to pursue opportunities at any of Northeastern’s 13 global campuses.
For recipient Nyari Wright, a first-year nursing major who just finished her first semester at Northeastern University Oakland, the scholarship was a chance to change the course of her educational future by attending a four-year university.
“I originally planned on going to community college because I thought a four-year [university] is so expensive. That was until I got an email about the scholarship and then I got accepted [to Northeastern], … so I could come here,” Wright said. “With this program, students won’t have to be in debt. Their families won’t have to struggle paying for college. My mom is a single mom, so it would be hard for her to pay thousands of dollars for me to go to school.”
She’s one of many Oakland public school students whose educational opportunities are often limited after high school. According to Oakland Unified School District(OUSD) records, 44% of OUSD graduates enrolled in college in 2020, which falls below the California state average of 62%.
As a first-generation college student, Wright said receiving the scholarship and attending a four-year university opens doors not only for herself but also for her family.
“For me, it’s about setting an example for the younger people in my family, like my siblings and my younger cousins,” Wright said. “I want to be a good example for them.”
Existing scholarship programs for Boston Public Schools high school students and Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity programs inspired the development of the Northeastern Oakland Opportunity Scholarship, said Daniel Sachs, dean of Northeastern University Oakland. Sachs said the effect that the Boston scholarship programs have already had on local communities is what encouraged Northeastern leadership to replicate the initiative in Oakland.
“We saw the experience that Northeastern had in Boston and we saw the impact that it had on families and students in Boston, which made it a very easy decision to extend that to Oakland,” Sachs said.
In Boston, Northeastern provides $13.5 million in funding every year toward full scholarships for 150 Boston Public Schools (BPS) students and maintains programs that help prepare BPS students and their families for college. Sachs believes the same growth in opportunities and community confidence is already taking effect in Oakland.
“All you have to do is meet those students to see the life-changing effect [a scholarship] can have on a family,” Sachs said. “Getting a full-ride four-year scholarship to a premier institution creates opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exist.”
Kien Le, a first-year computer science major originally from Vietnam, was also among the students who received the scholarship this year.
“The scholarship helped my family with finances and everything,” Le said. “My family didn’t believe that I got it the first time I told them. It was very exciting.”
For the past six years, Le has lived in Berkeley, a city neighboring Oakland. He said that local opportunities in tech were a major factor in his decision to attend college at the Oakland campus.
The campus of Northeastern University Oakland is an hour drive away from Silicon Valley, which is home to many of the world’s largest tech companies, including Apple, Google and Tesla. Northeastern also has a graduate campus in Silicon Valley.
“What’s exciting for the students on campus in Oakland is the access to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area in general,” Sachs said. “As wonderful and extraordinary as Boston is, there’s no place on earth quite like the East Bay and the level of innovation and the intensity of entrepreneurship and sort of this next generation technology experience is only available in this unique ecosystem.”
Looking to the future, Le plans to stay in Oakland, while Wright is heading to the Boston campus for the spring 2025 semester.
“Northeastern is committed to doing this for 10 students in the Oakland Unified School District every year for as long as we’re around,” Sachs said. “If you extrapolate and think about the impact that that has over time, right now, there’s seven students, but seven plus 10, plus 10, plus 10. You really start to see how that can change a community and have a positive impact.”
Wright says she has recommended the scholarship to some current Oakland high school students in the hope that they will follow similar paths. Sachs points to Northeastern’s dedication to community outreach as what made the development of the program in Oakland and its implementation for its inaugural year so successful and says that it has already strengthened the community of Northeastern University Oakland.
“It was natural to have this program in Boston translated over to Oakland and to be able to begin that effort to have impact in the community in a meaningful way,” Sachs said. “It really speaks to the institution’s commitment to the power of place and community. There are lots of universities that talk about it, but Northeastern is committed to actually doing it and that’s pretty special.”

The independent student newspaper of Northeastern University

source