VISITATION = INSPIRATION

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2025

Morningside Heights, New York City

I’m a student at Columbia College majoring in Financial Economics and Philosophy.

While attending Bronxville High School, a highly-resourced school system in Westchester, NY, I started to tour colleges as early as my first year.

Each time, despite my gratitude for the exposure, I thought very little about the ease with which I boarded planes, stayed at hotels, toured around the country or took college admissions prep-courses. To me, this is all too routine; it was a natural part of life.

One might say, I could have easily taken it all for GRANTED.

During the summer before my junior year, I learned about a student who had been offered a full scholarship to USC.However, she could not afford to get to USC with her caregiver (her uncle). Indeed, she had never visited the school prior to her acceptance. It came to me to ask my dad if his hotel company could donate a hotel room in Los Angeles, and, maybe a friend of ours who works for a major US airline could donate plane tickets. In a few days, through the help of our friends, plane tickets and hotel rooms were secured and this talented young woman and her uncle would soon be off for USC.

After this feel-good moment, I thought little more of the episode, but a seed had been planted in my mind.

Then, in August of 2022, I attended a talk given to some summer session students at the Roger Lehecka Double DiscoveryCenter at Columbia (DDC). DDC primarily offers first-generation, low-income students access to supplemental course work, counseling and application guidance. However, not many of their students tour colleges before applying.

As I sat there among these awesome and hardworking students it occurred to me that there might be a space for a non-profit to support college campus visitation for students from under-resourced high schools, many of who were also likely first-generation college applicants. I was at the time fortunate to conduct research into the impact of college campus visitation through an internship at the world-renowned Bloomberg Philanthropies. And so, hard work met inspiration and was then combined with financial support from many.

Since our founding, through partnerships with non-profits and even directly with high schools, GrantedUSA.org has made possible more than 1,000 student-campus visits to nearly 20 colleges, many of which we’ve visited multiple times with different student groups.

For first-generation students from under-resourced schools, it’s become clear to me that college campus visitation creates inspiration and also supports making informed decisions about where to apply or attend.

Though I am planning for a career in business, I am a deep believer (and product of) the transformative power of education. Indeed, fortune smiled on me as during my first year at Columbia I was allowed take a seminar in Equity and Access inAmerican Higher Education and make some incredible friends who are helping me keep fighting this good fight. Support foreducational access and equity will be a life-long passion of mine.

I thank our many donors. Even more, I thank the incredible students I’ve been blessed to meet along the way of a distance we have traveled together on buses that is nearly the equivalent of a drive across America. One of my greatest joys is accompanying the students on these college campus tours. It’s a tradition I keep up as often as I can, even while in college.

Thank you.

Simos C. Dimas

Founder & President, GrantedUSA.org

Columbia College Class of 2028