Uprooted Academy

The Problem

Postsecondary education remains the most reliable path to economic mobility, but getting through the application process is not simply a question of academic readiness or aspiration. Students must assess options, interpret financial aid, meet multiple deadlines, and submit enrollment requirements while navigating uncertainty, cost anxiety, and the fear of making the wrong choice. Each year, at least 300,000 academically qualified students start but never submit their applications. Disproportionately, these “non-submitters” are Black and Hispanic, first-generation, special needs, and enrolled in Title I high schools, despite being academically qualified.

The issue is not ability, but whether students have the right support to keep moving when the process becomes confusing, stressful, or discouraging. Low-income and first-generation students are more dependent on school-based guidance, even though counselors in under-resourced schools advise 300 to 400 students at a time. For too many, the difference between completing an application or falling out of the process entirely depends on whether the right guidance, advisory support, and relationships are available.

The Solution

Uprooted Academy helps under-resourced students realize their postsecondary aspirations by combining AI advising, counselor support, and trusted adults who help them persist through the application process and reach move-in day. Through school and district partnerships, Uprooted Academy turns a complex, fragmented process into a coordinated navigation experience, activating the social capital students already have but often lack the structure to mobilize.

Students begin with a short onboarding survey about their goals, interests, academic profile, and constraints, then identify their support network: up to eight trusted adults who can provide encouragement, accountability, and practical support when the process becomes confusing or discouraging. Rootie, Uprooted Academy’s AI advising tool, uses this context to create a personalized college and career roadmap with best-fit pathways, key requirements, deadlines, and next steps. Counselors monitor progress, identify risk points, and coordinate timely interventions across the student’s support network.

Uprooted Academy distills user data to generate field-wide learnings that demonstrate how AI can expand institutional capacity, eliminate systemic access barriers, and modernize counseling practices. By 2035, Uprooted Academy aims to support 100,000 students across the US each year directly and indirectly, expanding access to high-quality, relationship-based advising for the students least likely to receive it today.

Impact

Supported more than 330 counselors and over 15,000 students, directly and indirectly to date, with 70% meaningfully engaging their support network.

Doubled applications in partner Title I schools, with students applying to roughly 3x more schools, resulting in more than 5,300 acceptances at trade schools, community colleges, and universities.