❋
XQ
institute
2017 - SYPartners
Social Impact / Strategy / Content Design / Illustration / Publication Design
we helped XQ put college within reach — for every student in America.
it was 2017, and XQ — laurene powell jobs' $50 million bet on reimagining the american high school — was ready to scale its tools beyond the winning schools to reach every student in the country.
❋ THE CHALLENGELaurene Powell Jobs had been betting on american education long before anyone was watching.
In 1997, she cofounded College Track as a storefront operation in East Palo Alto — helping two dozen teenagers not just get into college, but find a way to pay for it and finish. Twenty years later, that quiet conviction had scaled into something national. XQ was her moon shot: a $50 million open call to reimagine the american high school from the ground up.
❋ THE CHALLENGEXQ had already sparked a national movement. Now they needed to hand students the map...
The Super School Project had proven that the American high school could be redesigned. But transformation at scale meant more than winning schools — it meant reaching any student, anywhere, who needed a clearer path to graduation and college.
The tools existed. The question was how to make them feel human enough to actually use.
❋ THE DISCOVERYTo design it right, we first had to understand the journey ourselves.
We partnered with two leading experts in college access and student navigation — collaborating deeply until we understood not just the information, but the emotional terrain students actually move through. (
❋ THE OUTCOMEwe ❋ wrote & designed every single page of five books, built to travel with students through one of the most consequential journeys of their lives. we called it
❋ the college pathfinder.
The College Pathfinder is series of 5 books that acts a guide for students to graduate high school and get to college.
Each book represents an integral part of this journey, from discovering your passion, to the getting support you need, to paying and applying. They contain tips, tools, and a large set of resources for each topic, giving students the option to select worksheets that make the most sense for their individual situations.
These 5 books were launched at the XQ Super School Live event in September 2017
