A study examined the effectiveness of the Louisiana State Youth Opportunities Unlimited (LSYOU) program. (LSYOU is an intensive 8-week residential dropout prevention program held at Louisiana State University that provided work experience, academic training, counseling, supportive services, recreation, health care, team support, and training in saving money to disadvantaged high school students who were identified as at risk of dropping out of school.) To assess the effectiveness of LSYOU, the academic achievement, career maturity, and intentions regarding staying in and finishing high school of a treatment and a control group were compared. The treatment group consisted of 94 randomly assigned LSYOU students, and the control group was comprised of 51 Summer Youth Employment students. Various subtests and subscales of the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills and Career Maturity Inventory were used to collect pre- and posttest data on the two groups. The treatment group demonstrated statistically significant gains over the control group in reading comprehension, mathematics comprehension, and mathematics concepts and applications. In addition, the treatment group showed statistically significant gains with respect to decisiveness, involvement, orientation, and compromise scales. No statistically significant difference between the two groups was evident on the independence scale. Neither of the two programs in which the treatment and control groups participated appear to have exerted a statistically significant impact on students' intentions to remain in and graduate from school. (MN)