Brown University classrooms have been graced by 11 Nobel Prize winners and 29 Pulitzer Prize winners. The United States’ seventh-oldest institution of higher learning (founded in 1764) has graduated four U.S. Secretaries of State and more than 100 members of Congress. The Rhode Island Ivy League school has sent 21 billionaires and 38 Olympic medalists out into the world.
Sitting in a modest Reality Changers office in downtown San Diego’s East Village is Aimee Gutierrez Carmona. The 19-year-old from La Mesa is wearing a pristine white Brown t-shirt, indicating she’s a member of the Class of 2028.
She’s got the gift of gab and an illuminating smile. This daughter of Mexican immigrant parents exudes intelligence. She’s not braggy. But a 4.6 GPA from Helix Charter High School and a double major of Psychology and Comparative Literature at an Ivy is by no means the remedial track.
Gutierrez Carmona has been in Reality Changers for nearly four years. To be eligible for the program, a San Diego County student must be entering 9th to 12th grade, have parents who did not attend college and be in a free/reduced lunch program and/or be considered low income.
Teaching young people with no real-world concept of what it takes to enter the realm of higher education is what Reality Changers has been doing since 2001. In that time, the nonprofit has helped more than 3,500 local high schoolers get into college.
Reality Changers served 632 students during the 2023-04 school year. The Class of 2024 earned more than $12.8 million in scholarships and grants for four-years of college.
Not every program participant gets into an Ivy. Many are accepted to California schools. Most receive scholarships. The top three schools are San Diego State University, University of California, San Diego and California State University, San Marcos.
Along with four-year institutions, others students are prepared for community college and stay local at San Diego Mesa College and San Diego City College.
Gutierrez Carmona says she earned nearly a free-ride in scholarships to Brown. Just getting accepted blew her mind.
“As far as I could see, college was the highest wall ever,” she says. “Before Reality Changers, it felt so challenging, like I was alone, and my parents weren’t able to help me as much as they wished they could.”
When she started attending Reality Changers programming, she saw other students in the same boat.
“They were first-gen, like me,” Gutierrez Carmona says. “ They also didn’t have parents that knew the system, or could guide them. I found people who look like me, feel like me and are going through the same things.”
When she got that email telling her to check the Brown application portal, Gutierrez Carmona was alone at home, lying on her bed.
“I was on my phone, all hunched over,” she says. “I was like, ‘Okay, may as well get this over with’ and end the anxiety. When I saw ‘Welcome to the Class of 2028’ my heart dropped. This was my “reach” school. “I thought there was no way I could get into a great school like Brown.”
The school paid for her to do a campus visit. She arrived in Rhode Island and felt like she was on a completely different planet.
“But then it all felt right,” Gutierrez Carmona says. “I found my people. We went over to the Center for Students of Color and I decided to commit right away. People started crowding around me and recording me…I knew this was where I wanted to be for the next four years.”
Tamara Y. Craver became president & CEO of Reality Changers in 2019. Previously, she’d been in Los Angeles, working for a national organization called Posse Foundation for 13 years. Her move to San Diego came shortly before the pandemic.
“I met a community of leadership that helped Reality Changers get through uncertain times,” Craver says. “We kept all of our staff during COVID, which was phenomenal.”
She soon realized that home wasn’t necessarily the safest place for students during the pandemic. The organization tracked down all its kids, even ones living with different guardians or across the border.
Craver notes what many discovered – Zoom isn’t ideal for day-to-day instruction. But it was eye opening as a tool that could be used later, after the pandemic, to supplement learning programs.
Reality Changers’ primary high school programs are “College Town” and “College Apps Academy.”
College Town serves 8th through 11th graders. It’s college prep for high schoolers. During evenings, coaches help students set personal goals and check in on progress. Tutors help with specific homework questions and test preparation. College Town also offers opportunities like internships, SAT prep classes and career field trips.
College Apps Academy focuses on 12th graders who need college admissions help. Coaches work independently with students on paperwork, college applications and scholarship applications. There are workshops on financial aid, essay writing and standardized tests. Tutors help students identify their strengths and showcase their accomplishments and unique qualities.
Craver says she’s proudest of the fact that Reality Changers students focus on where they’re going, not where they come from.
“Our students are so amazing that they don’t let circumstances define who they are,” she says. “It’s where they’re going, and they push through. You’ll meet a student of ours and you would’ve never known what their life was like before they became a college student.”
Craver points to students who have had hearing impairment or medical issues and graduate at the top of their high school class then go off to “amazing institutions across the country on full scholarships.”
To keep its doors open, Reality Changers applies for grants and accepts donations. Craver says the organization is lucky that it historically hasn’t received much federal aid – given the ongoing trend of decreased aid to social safety net nonprofits from the Trump Administration.
Still, the ripple effect felt by cutbacks to local schools will definitely affect Reality Changers’ student population.
A financial boon did come in 2024. Reality Changers applied for and received a grant from McKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving Foundation. Scott is the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. In their divorce, she acquired $36 billion dollars, which she has been largely giving away to nonprofits.
Craver says getting that grant still doesn’t feel real to her.
“We applied and it was a very rigorous application process,” she says. “To be considered, you have to be willing to read other applications. You’re judged by your peers, which is another great opportunity to see what other people are doing.”
Craver read 10 to 15 other applications, and gave feedback to those organizations.
“We kept moving through the process and getting great reviews,” she says. “And then the call came very early in the morning. They let us know not only were we a recipient, but the application was so very strong they were going to double the donation.”
Instead of one million dollars, Reality Changers was granted two million dollars.
Even with the Scott donation in the bank, fundraising efforts continue. Reality Changers has an exhilarating event coming up on August 24 called Over The Edge.
Anyone who raises $1,000 in pledges can sign up to rappel down the exterior wall of downtown San Diego’s Grand Hyatt. Over The Edge is run by a professional company that does this all over the country. It’s been offered in San Diego in the past; Reality Changers took over the local license for the event in 2021.
Craver, who claims to be vastly afraid of heights, went over the wall that first year.
“I was turning 50, and wanted to start my year off with a bang,” she says. “Also, I wanted to model for students. We are asking them to do big, bold, scary things, so we also have to do big, bold, scary things.”
Craver points out how Reality Changers asks kids to go out of their comfort zone.
“We’re asking them to step out of their communities, be the first in their families to go to college and do something that is unprecedented,” she says.
All the while she rappelled down the side of a hotel, she told herself, “If my students can do it, I can do it, too.” SDSun
