Northwestern Offers New Help for Chicago Students

Northwestern University is today announcing a new effort to help prepare more students in the Chicago public schools to enroll at Northwestern or other competitive colleges, The Chicago Tribune reported. Fifty high school freshmen a year -- from the city's regular high schools -- will be selected for a special academy in which they will receive year-round tutoring, college counseling and test prep. All costs will be paid by Northwestern. Currently about 75 of Northwestern's 2,000 freshmen come from the Chicago schools. That's up from 28 five years ago, but university officials want to see significant growth in that figure.