"Maybe I could have done in on my own if I had tried," he muses. But when his tutor, Brandois senior Carol Lee asks, "But would you have tried without Upward Bound?" he shakes his head.

For her part, Bowen is rather cautions about making grand claims for the program . "We are more of a support system than anything else, like a stepping stone from high school to college which gives the students the incentive they need to work," she says.

"The high schools are not pushing the students and not giving them the opportunities that I feel the students really warrant," she adds. "They are not concerned about what happens to students after they get their high school diplomas."

Bowen cites a core staff which has been together for over eight years as the primary reason the Harvard program works so successfully. Indeed, many of the former students find themselves returning to Upward Bound to either teach or tutor; Bowen herself was a student and then a tutor with the program.

Bowen says that after three years of working with the kids, the emotional attachment often becomes stronger than academic need, and that the administrators often become like surrogate mothers and fathers for the students.

"They realize that they have a friend with us and not just someone who sits behind a desk. Even the parents know they can come to use with any type of problem. We have gained a rapport with them that is very important...I was just on vacation and I had one student call me up when I got back and ask,' Dottle, how could you leave me.'"