Two Cities, One Thursday: Attollo Recruit Tours Philly & D.C.
Early starts. New cities. A clearer view of what’s next.
Most high school students build their college list from what they already know: the schools their friends talk about, the names on sweatshirts at the mall, the campus closest to home. That list gets bigger, and more honest, when a student actually walks onto a campus, sits in on an admissions session, and eats lunch in a dining hall surrounded by people a few years older than they are. At Attollo, we treat that kind of exposure as part of the work, not a bonus on top of it. A scholar who has stood on a campus can picture themselves there. A scholar who hasn’t is left to guess.
That’s why the buses leave before sunrise. On Thursday, October 15, 101 Attollo Recruit scholars set out from Lancaster County in two groups headed for two different cities. Scholars from Conestoga Valley High School and Attollo’s Community Cohort spent the day in Washington, D.C., while scholars from Ephrata and Warwick High Schools spent theirs in Philadelphia. Between them, the two groups toured four universities, explored some of the most recognizable landmarks on the East Coast, and logged the kind of long, full day that tends to stick with a student well after the bus pulls back into the parking lot.
Conestoga Valley High School + Community Cohort
The D.C. group started earliest of anyone, as 44 scholars rolled out of Conestoga Valley High School at 5:30am and picked up the Community Cohort at Attollo Headquarters on West King Street before heading south by 6:00am. After a rest stop along the way, the bus arrived at George Washington University by 10:00am for a 90-minute visit. GW sits in Foggy Bottom, a few blocks from the White House, and its campus is woven directly into the city grid rather than set apart from it. For students considering an urban school, it’s a clear picture of what that actually looks like day to day: academic buildings next to federal offices, residence halls a short walk from the State Department, the whole city functioning as an extension of campus. The group stayed on campus for lunch at GW, getting a firsthand look at the rhythm of a weekday in a university dining space and a sense of what an ordinary afternoon there feels like for the students who call it home.
The afternoon opened on the National Mall, where scholars spent time exploring the roughly two-mile stretch between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, with the Washington Monument at its center and the Smithsonian museums lining both sides. It’s a place most students have seen in textbooks and on screens, and one that reads very differently in person. From there, the group made its way to Georgetown University for a 90-minute visit at 3:00pm. Founded in 1789, Georgetown is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in the country, and its hilltop campus above the Potomac River, anchored by the spires of Healy Hall, offered a striking contrast to GW’s city-block layout just a couple of miles away. Two universities in the same city, with two completely different feels, gave scholars a useful lesson in how much the word “campus” can mean.
The day wound down at The Wharf, D.C.’s waterfront neighborhood along the Washington Channel, where scholars explored the piers and promenade before picking up dinner for the drive home, while trading impressions of the day’s two campuses. The bus departed for Lancaster around 8:30pm, arriving back at Conestoga Valley at 10:45pm and Attollo Headquarters at 11:15pm, closing out a nearly eighteen-hour day that took scholars from a dark parking lot to the front steps of two of the country’s best-known universities and back again.
Ephrata High School + Warwick High School
The Philadelphia group of 57 scholars departed their respective schools at 6:30am and headed east to Saint Joseph’s University for a 90-minute visit that morning. Founded in 1851, Saint Joseph’s is a Jesuit university on Philadelphia’s western edge, with a campus that sits along City Avenue and straddles the line between the city and the suburbs. That location gives students a mix of both worlds: a traditional campus feel with Center City a short trip away. Scholars stayed for lunch on campus at SJU, taking in the pace of a midday rush alongside current students and getting a feel for daily life beyond the official tour route.
At 1:00pm, the group arrived at the University of Pennsylvania for a two-hour visit. Founded by Benjamin Franklin, Penn is an Ivy League research university in the heart of Philadelphia, where Locust Walk runs through the center of campus past historic halls, libraries, and student hubs. With two full hours on the ground, scholars had time to go beyond the highlights and get a real feel for the place, the kind of extended visit that turns a famous name into somewhere a student can actually picture themselves.
The afternoon shifted gears with a trip out to King of Prussia, where scholars explored Primark at the King of Prussia Mall, one of the largest shopping centers in the country. The group then sat down to dinner together at Shake Shack before departing for home at 7:30pm, arriving back at home around 9:00pm after a fourteen-and-a-half-hour day that covered two campuses, a stop at the mall, and plenty to talk about on the ride home.
Four Campuses, One Day
By the time all buses were back in Lancaster County, scholars had seen four very different versions of college life: a university built into the streets of the nation’s capital, a historic hilltop campus above the Potomac, a Jesuit school on the edge of a major city, and an Ivy League campus with a neighborhood of its own. None of them are the same, and that’s exactly the point. The more campuses a scholar sees, the easier it becomes to know what they want, ask better questions, and believe that a place like Penn or Georgetown is a real option rather than a distant one.
About Attollo:
Attollo is a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering youth through education. By providing mentorship, academic enrichment, and college preparation support, Attollo aims to level the playing field and equip students with the tools they need to succeed in college and beyond. Since its inception, Attollo has helped thousands of students realize their potential and achieve their academic goals.
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