JP Conte Funds a Gap That Starts Before Freshman Year

Nearly 784,000 college applicants from the 2016-17 admissions cycle were tracked for six years after they enrolled. What came back complicated a label higher education has leaned on for decades. Common App's research team found that six-year bachelor's degree completion among first-generation students ran from 58% to 78%, depending on how much college their own parents had completed. That's a 20-point spread hidden inside a single category schools have long treated as one group.

"The findings are not going to be much of a surprise for anyone who's ever talked with students about their experiences," said Sarah Nolan, the Common App research scientist who led the work. JP Conte, founder and managing partner of his family office, Lupine Crest Capital, has given for years to programs designed to help students succeed.

How one label hides four different outcomes

The single first-generation label, the researchers argue, obscures more than it explains, so they split it into four. The usual two-way divide was set aside, and applicants were grouped into four parental-education tiers labeled striving, emerging, advancing and established. Completion climbed as parents' own schooling did. Continuing-generation students showed a spread of their own, from 70% when one parent held a bachelor's degree to 92% when both held a doctorate or professional degree. First-generation completion, from 58 to 78%, overlapped the bottom of that range rather than sitting far below it.

The disadvantage didn't hold steady across a college career. Gaps between the groups grew as students moved closer to a degree. A student whose parents never enrolled in college works with a different, and often longer, set of unknowns than one whose parents earned an associate degree, and a six-year measure catches setbacks that surface well after a freshman-year advising session or a single scholarship can reach them.

What a finished degree is worth

The distance between finishing and not finishing turns up in a paycheck. Workers with a bachelor's degree earned a median of $1,543 a week in 2024, against $930 for those with only a high school diploma, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Their unemployment rate ran lower too, 2.5% against 4.2%.

That earnings gap gives the completion figures their weight. A student who enrolls but leaves without a degree still carries the cost, and often the debt, of college, without the higher wage that finishing tends to bring. The four-tier finding points to the students furthest from a family history of college as the ones who feel that risk most sharply.

Support that starts in ninth grade

JP Conte has been a longtime supporter of SEO Scholars, a free, eight-year program that works with students from ninth grade through college graduation out of New York City, San Francisco, and other locations. About 80% of its students are the first in their families to earn a college degree.

The program reports that all of its students are accepted to four-year colleges, that 85% go on to graduate, and that 75% attend a school ranked among the top 100 nationally by U.S. News & World Report. Starting in ninth grade gives it years to help students. Conte, a first-generation college graduate himself, has backed the program for years. "I grew up in a pretty modest household that had big dreams, big aspirations, and lots of love, but we didn't have a lot of resources," he told CEO Weekly.

A second program that begins later in high school

JP Conte has also been a consistent supporter of 10,000 Degrees, a Bay Area organization that usually begins supporting students in their junior and senior years of high school and stays with them through college. During FY25, it reached more than 16,000 students and family members, including 10,450 high school students and family members, roughly 4,500 already in college, and more than 1,500 alumni. That same year, $9.8 million in scholarships were awarded and students drew on $70 million in total financial aid.

More than 80% of the group's four-year college students earn bachelor's degrees, roughly double the national average, and 85% graduate debt-free, compared with a national rate near 16%.

SEO Scholars starts in ninth grade. 10,000 Degrees follows a similar path. Both support positive student growth, and JP Conte has backed these programs for a long time.