O.D. Wyatt High School is less than six miles from TCU, but to Colton Blake the two seemed worlds away.

“TCU was a place I wanted to go, but didn’t think it was attainable,” said Blake, who graduated from Wyatt last year. “I thought it was only for rich, snobby people. It was just a dream for someone like me.”

Now Blake is a freshman music education major whose powerful tenor voice graces the TCU Chorale.

“I learned TCU isn’t like the stereotype,” he said. “The people are friendly and want to help.”
Blake was able to enroll at TCU thanks to the Community Scholars program, created a decade ago to keep TCU on the radar of high-achieving students at nine local high schools with at-risk populations. Providing both financial aid and support services, the Community Scholars program has a 98-percent graduation rate.

Blake was set to go to Florida A&M when he heard he’d been selected as a Community Scholar, which would cover the bulk of the tuition and room and board at TCU. He worked with the office of financial aid to find other grants, scholarships and loans to cover the rest.
Blake, whose father is a furniture store manager and whose mother is a teacher at O.D. Wyatt, said now his younger brother and sister want to join him at TCU.

“It’s great to be so close to home because I can see my family,” he said. “And I’m able to go back to O.D. Wyatt and tell students there about TCU. I’m proof that a TCU education can happen for them too.”

Related stories:
Economic Realities
Faces of Financial Aid
Eddie Marie Toines-Nobles
Katey Rudd
Floyd Hernandez III
Holly Amerson
Colton Blake