In the next few months, the University will begin working with QuestBridge, a non-profit organization that connects high-achieving and motivated low-income high school students with elite colleges and universities across the country.

“It’s a great thing for us because of QuestBridge’s ability to find talented students who may have not heard about Wesleyan and may not have the economic wherewithal to get here,” said President Michael Roth, who made the University’s partnership with QuestBridge official just a few weeks ago.

The program’s network of about 30,000 recruiters—from high school teachers to youth ministers to QuestBridge alums—help identify qualified students, who fill out a 17-page application similar to the Common Applications. About 1,600 students are accepted and become part of a pool of students who are recruited and looked at by QuestBridge’s college partners, which include Yale, Amherst, Stanford and Oberlin.

Colleges have access to these applications and notify QuestBridge of the students they are interested in. Then QuestBridge helps to match the schools with students who have expressed interest in that particular partner college. This matching process takes place in the fall, around the same time of early decision.

Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Nancy Hargrave Meislahn said that the University hopes to identify several members of the Class of 2013 through “National College Match Program.” She is looking forward to getting in contact with students who wouldn’t traditionally apply to the University.

“My colleagues [at other institutions] say, ’these are kids who didn’t show up in our applicant pool on their own,’” Meislahn said.

Roth echoed her sentiments.

“I think we will get the word out about Wesleyan’s excellence in the liberal arts to those who haven’t heard about it,” he said.

According to Meislahn, the University’s partnership with QuestBridge stemmed from mutual interest. The University had been interested in socioeconomic diversification the student body when Michael McCullough, the emergency room doctor who founded QuestBridge reached out to administrators earlier this year. He was looking to add five universities to the list of partner colleges.

“[McCullough] was interested in us for two reasons,” Meislahn said. “He had spoken with Francisco Carreño [’06], who was a QuestBridge scholar, and they’d discussed how Wesleyan was a complement to the other partner colleges. Also, part of his interest in Wesleyan centered around our deep roots in working with community-based programs that reach out to lower income students, like Prep for Prep and ABC [A Better Chance].”

Meislahn pointed out that QuestBridge uses a fundamentally different model than more local programs like Prep for Prep.

“It isn’t about the Saturday morning academy,” she said. “This is more about planting seeds of a vision that college is possible. There are many students who have no idea how welcoming this community would be.”

Both Meislahn and Roth said that QuestBridge, which as been matching qualified students and elite colleges for five years, fits in seamlessly with the University’s commitment to socioeconomic diversity.

“This is so consonant with Wesleyan’s values and long term commitments,” she said. “This is a natural evolution.”