Tilt

Sinthuja’s career in education started when she left a consulting firm to become a high school math teacher through Teach for America. Through this experience, she fell in love with education but saw the need for change on a larger scale. Consequently, she joined a partnership between Summit Public Schools and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative focused on reinventing the classroom. After gaining a breadth of experience leading data-driven initiatives, she wanted to further develop her skill set and went to the Kellogg School of Management to pursue an MBA. From day one, she used the two years at Kellogg to explore entrepreneurship and joined Zell Fellows and 4.0 Schools Tiny Fellowship to help reach her goal. She was also named a Youn Impact Scholar for her commitment to leveraging business as a method for positive change in the world. She is excited to continue to grow Tilt’s impact.

Colleges post their sticker price online, which is the highest amount they will charge students. However, they continue to offer more and more discounts in the form of merit-aid. Money that would have previously spent on need-based aid is being shifted to merit-aid to attract more wealthy students. As a result, students who were previously left out of higher education are now being pushed out again and left behind through student debt. Black and Latinx communities take on more debt and struggle to pay it off.  We are working towards bringing transparency to college pricing and helping students understand their investment in higher education. College is one of the last avenues for social mobility in our country, and without equitable opportunities, the income and racial divide will continue to grow. Our project focuses on giving these communities back their consumer power and helping them make smart financial decisions.

We are focusing on providing financial advice, specifically as it relates to an investment in higher education, for high school seniors exploring their college options. Roughly 1.9M low-income students graduate every year from high school. 65% of these students enroll in college but then only 1 in 4 graduates within 6 years. The biggest reason why is financial pressure.  In 1990, low-income families had to spend roughly 40% of their entire income to pay for college. Now, they are expected to spend more than double at 84% with the cost of tuition still rising every year. Although this problem is felt deeply in the United States, it is also true across the globe. Tuition in the UK has risen 145% since 2008, Spain 66%, Italy 49%, US 39%. Even with COVID-19 and colleges being pushed online, they are still charging the same tuition. These high prices severely limit education as a means for social mobility. Instead, these high prices continue to leave communities behind or saddle them with debt that they can’t escape for decades. Something needs to be done about student debt, and there are not enough leaders in the field.

We are a financial aid advising platform that works directly with schools and nonprofits serving under-resourced students. We help students and families project the costs of college based on their family income to ensure that they are applying to colleges, which won’t leave them saddled with debt. We walk them through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and answer any questions as they go through the process. Then, we help them compare their financial aid packages once they have been accepted and help them budget for college. Every year, as we work with more students, we are better able to predict the financial aid packages students will receive. We use this data to improve the college list of the next graduating class. We are taking reach, safety, and target and applying it to financial aid. We supplement the services of high schools and college access nonprofits with our financial aid expertise. We help them keep track of their entire graduating class, so they can ensure that all students make progress through financial aid. We also provide them with an overview of the colleges that are financially affordable for their students to help improve their advising services.

We are working directly with under-resourced students, which includes students from low-income backgrounds, students of color, students from immigrant communities, and first-generation college students. These are students who struggle to afford college and don’t have as many adults in their lives who have gone through this system. Thus, they lack the expertise to navigate this extremely complex system. From the beginning, we have been working directly with these communities to understand their needs and build a solution together. Last year, we worked with 3 schools and 1 college access nonprofit that all directly served these communities to run a pilot with over 100 students. Now, with that feedback, we have iterated and refined our project idea. This year, we will work with over 20 organizations to help more students during this time. We have also been cognizant of who we bring on to the team and have a majority of team members who are part of these communities and who went through these exact same problems. We will continue to prioritize interviews and testing with our community stakeholders as we launch new features. We are committed to uplifting these communities and will continue to involve them in our decision making.

We are specifically focused on helping under-resourced communities access affordable colleges that will allow them to access more opportunities without being saddled by debt. Student debt is the new chokehold that is crippling Black and Latinx communities. Black borrowers have to take on nearly 50% more debt than white peers. Tuition pricing and student debt is continuing to perpetuate systemic racism, affecting generations and generations. We are trying to drive real change by providing these communities that are continuously left behind access and advice to affordable pathways to receive a college degree.

I started working on the idea when I was at graduate school. After being a high school teacher, I wanted to help students figure out their next step after high school and started exploring ideas with extracurricular activities. However, I quickly realized that low-income communities couldn’t afford these types of activities, so I pivoted to focus on college access. I took the idea to classes in my graduate school where I explored the idea in depth with other graduate students . We talked to stakeholders and experimented with mini-tests on how to create a viable solution. Then, we pitched our idea to schools and organizations in the area and piloted the program with over 100 students. At the beginning of the pilot, we were initially focused on college admissions and wanted to help students navigate the admissions process. However, we learnt that students had enough resources in this area but struggled with financial aid. As we explored this area, we learnt that there are countless challenges that students struggle with. We picked a specific problem, understanding financial aid letters, and have used that as our starting point to entering the space.

I used to be a high school math teacher in an under-resourced community and saw my students struggle every year with what to do after graduation. We had a culture of high expectations and encouraged our students to go to college. As a result, many ended up at the same community college with abysmal graduation rates. They followed the herd and enrolled in college, but they had no idea what they actually wanted to do. As a result, within a few years, I watched them dropout of college, struggle with debt, and become even farther behind. I knew that we weren’t providing the advice that they needed. I knew that something was missing. As I have explored this space further, I have seen how our culture pushes students to go to college without understanding any of the financial aspects. Students are now taking on tens of thousands of dollars in debt but have no clear path to paying it back. Every year, we as a society continue to divest in public and higher education. As a result, prices are going to continue to go up. However, the majority of students and families cannot afford these high tuition prices.

First, I have the experience of being a high school math teacher. I taught students  how to solve quadratic equations, and now, I want to teach them about the most important equation they are solving for -- the return on investment for higher education. Second, I have experience building and scaling innovative education technology products. I worked with Summit Public Schools and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative on scaling their personalized learning initiative. On this project, I developed and trained school leaders on how to use data to coach their teachers. I analyze student outcomes to understand how effective the program was. I also helped their growth team manage their database and track the effectiveness of their initiatives.  Third, I have the skill set needed to make this program successful. I have a Master’s in Education in Urban Teaching and an MBA. I also have taught myself how to code and built the initial infrastructure for our software application. Fourth, I am deeply curious and passionate about this topic. I started a Certificate in College Counseling and have attended training sessions on financial aid. I have attended conferences, joined associations, and continue to stay informed of important issues, especially during this turbulent time. Finally, I am one of the few innovators in this space, focused on under-resourced students. More needs to be done to help students access affordable colleges, yet there is very little innovation. Those that do innovate are brought up by large companies invested in keeping the status quo.

One of our biggest challenges is our reliance on the staff at these schools and college access nonprofits. However, counselors are already overburdened, so many times, they become overwhelmed and aren’t able to facilitate connections with their students. This happened this past year when the teachers at Chicago Public Schools went on strike. It was in the fall and an important time for college applications. We quickly found out that the teacher’s emails were shut down for the duration of the strike. Consequently, we reached out to our current students and let them know that they could message us at any time if they had questions. Then, we also told them to share our services with any of their friends or families. We also increased our outreach online to help more students and families. We are also adapting our product for the long-term to decrease reliance on counselors. Being in education, we know that it is important to adapt to meet the needs of your students and families. Thus, whenever faced with challenges, we think through alternative solutions to ensure that our students and families continue to receive the help that they need.

I always have put the needs of my students and communities first. My first year of teaching, we didn’t have access to a curriculum, so I had to write every lesson plan and activity from scratch. I spent my weekends getting up to speed on the most innovative curriculum and teaching methods. On top of that, halfway through the year, another math teacher left. I knew that we wouldn’t be able to fill the position during the school year, so I started  writing lesson plans for the substitute teacher. I also gave up my professional learning period to take on an additional class. One week, when the teacher was out sick, I taught both classrooms totaling 80 students in the gym. I rotated between the two classrooms providing direct instruction and activities for them to work on, leveraging the support of teacher aids. I put my heart and soul into teaching and will continue to demonstrate this type of leadership in any project I am leading.