Project HARP

HARP is an acronym for Helping to Attract and Recruit at Purchase. The idea behind HARP is for current Purchase College students to go back to their former high schools and speak to the students about the college selection and application process. The major goal is to inform the students about college life and the expectations that are attached to this experience and not to recruit them to attend Purchase College specifically. The majority of the high schools visited is in the inner-city and have high ethnic minority populations. HARP aims to first give the volunteers from Purchase a sense of connection and purpose at the institution and second increase its ethnic minority populations. HARP is managed by the HARP Council- students affiliated with COPA- whose main tasks are to coordinate the three specific types of programs that HARP offers. These programs are as follows:

High School Visits
HARP High School Visits are one-time visits to the school. Visits are approximately one hour in length and Purchase volunteers are selected by availability. Participants from the schools can range from freshmen to seniors.

Three Months of Purchase (TOP) Program
TOP visits are limited to two schools per semester. The goal of a TOP program visit is to establish a consistent and working relationship with a high school in an attempt to educate a select group from under-represented backgrounds of its senior class on the college application and selection process. The TOP program involves four Purchase students who will visit this group three times over three months- thus increasing familiarity with each visit and hopefully establishing both a connection and rapport.

Submerged in the Experience (SITE) Program
The SITE program is limited to two schools per semester. The program reverses the visit formula. Rather then going to the students in their high schools, SITE brings the students to Purchase College for a half day. The high school students will be given the opportunity to shadow current Purchase students in the classroom, convene for a dinner and brief program presentation on college life, and then conclude the visit with an educational program conducted by the COPA student organizations.