By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Devin Mullen could have spent the summer before his senior year at Princeton High School hanging out with friends or working to earn a few extra dollars.
Instead, he and 73 other high school students from Mercer County have spent the past six and a half weeks taking courses at an institute for high-achieving, low income students designed to prepare them to get into top colleges.
The Princeton University Preparatory Program, started in 2001, uses a mix of academic work and character building, starting when teens are about to enter the sophomore year of high school and continuing up to when they are due to be seniors.
Students are clustered into groups of rising sophomores, juniors and seniors.Alumni of the program have gone on to schools such as the University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Many of them are the first in their families to go to college.
”The idea was that there are among the students in this region, there are students who have the potential to be competitive at the best colleges in the country, but sort of lack the cultural capital and the social capital to get there,” said Jason R. Klugman, PUPP director. “So they might have the academics, but not maybe the wherewithal.”
Admission to PUPP is competitive. Working with the guidance departments at six partner high schools, the program chooses students based on their eighth-grade state test scores, grades from the first semester of high school freshman year, family income and other factors. More students apply than get in.
”All of it is creating a pathway to college and a pathway for success for students who we believe have the academic potential but may not have that pathway laid out in front of them,” Mr. Klugman said in an interview from Aaron Burr Hall.
Aside from Princeton High School, the PUPP students come from Ewing, Lawrence, Nottingham and Trenton. About 85 percent of them are black and Hispanic.
The program is free to students, with the university and donors covering the costs. Students get their supplies, books and meals free; there’s also bus transportation to and from campus.
The coursework, involving art, math, literature and other courses, is theme-based. This year, students were looking at contemporary topics in Native-American studies, Mr. Klugman said.
There are also SAT prep for rising juniors and college preparation for rising seniors. Not to mention homework.
”A lot of people find that it’s like a ton of work. It’s usually not a huge deal for me. It’s work, but it’s not you’re going to bed at like three o’clock in the morning,” Mr. Mullen said.
”It’s not that it’s a lot of work, it’s that you have to have a lot self-discipline to actually start your work,” said Princeton High student Mary Ebong, who said the program feels like advanced high school. “The material we’re learning is not hard. It’s just they’re trying to get you to do more with it . . . and they give you more time, so they expect more from you.”
The program has a 16-member faculty plus10 university students who serve as teaching assistants. During the regular year, PUPP stays in contact with its students through weekly enrichment classes taught by university graduate students.
As for Mr. Klugman, he has a background in urban education and teacher preparation. He spent three years teaching social studies at West Philadelphia High School and teaching education courses as an adjunct at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his doctorate. He joined the university’s Program in Teacher Preparation in 2004.Besides classwork, PUPP takes students on cultural trips to see the opera as well as visits to colleges to the kinds of high-level colleges to which they might want to apply. PUPP encourages them to consider schools that will cover 100 percent of their costs and have high graduation rates.
Mr. Mullen said he wants to attend Columbia University. Ms. Ebong mentioned Syracuse University and Ithaca College as places she has in mind.
Mr. Klugman points to data that show PUPP works. Seventy percent of PUPP students graduate from college in four to six years, compared to 55 percent nationally and 9 percent for low income students. Alumni of the program have gone on to law and medical schools; one is even an admissions officer at Princeton University.
To university president Shirley Tilghman, “PUPP is one of Princeton’s most inspired and successful educational initiatives. It gives talented students of modest means the knowledge and confidence they need to fulfill their aspirations. It broadens the pool of applicants available to our nation’s finest colleges and universities, and, in time, it will strengthen the fabric of American society.”
When Mr. Klugman speaks of the PUPP students, he calls them “scholars.” The word choice is deliberate.
”We want them to recognize that there’s a potential greater than they what they might otherwise see, and there’s an expectation that’s greater than what might otherwise be expected,” he said. “So when we talk about PUPP scholars, it’s a little bit of identifying them as a special but also about raising expectations for everything: academic integrity, academic performance, everyday behaviors, all of that stuff.”

