As an organization, Excellent Options followed the model that Club 2012 put in place:

• Find an anchor school that someone in the Village has an affiliation with.  (Current student, Alumni, Fraternity or Sorority, etc.) and start planning and getting dates.
• Choose 1 or 2 other schools within a reasonable bus drive from the anchor school and start planning around the anchor school dates.
• Find organizations or groups on each campus that are willing to give us an up-close and personal tour of the schools.  (Dorms, cafeteria, and things that middle school kids would like to see or can relate to)
• Find XO parent chaperones willing to guide and keep our students safe

This model has been very successful over the years traveling to schools such as:Harvard Medical School, George Mason University, Hampton University, Old Dominion University, Yale, Brown University, Duke, North Carolina A&T, Wake Forest, Spelman, Morehouse, Clark, Tuskegee University, Howard University, James Madison, Va Tech and Ohio State University just to name a few.

Key Objectives – 

• Give young students the opportunity to see up close and personal an assortment of colleges through a deep dive into all aspects of student life of a University.
• To let them see people that look like them in college and have them directly interact and ask their own questions.

Outcomes –

• To have our black students start to consider colleges earlier in their academic career.
• To have them better understand the criteria for acceptance and success earlier.