In 1995, after years of conflict between Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and its adjacent neighborhood, the university traded "barriers for partnership and collaboration" and became part of the University Park Neighborhood Restoration Partnership (UPP). UPP was established primarily to stabilize the community by rehabilitating housing, making home ownership affordable, and encouraging small businesses. One of the most rewarding outcomes of this collaboration is the partnership between Clark University and Worcester Public Schools. This joint venture resulted in the creation of University Park Campus School, which opened in 1997 as a public school educational alternative for students from the challenging inner-city neighborhood directly adjacent to Clark. This article profiles University Park Campus, one of the schools that has been featured in NASSP's "Breakthrough High Schools." The school was founded with a clear but unusual mission for students from such a deprived background--to prepare every child for the academic and intellectual demands of any competitive four-year college or university through rigorous, but supported, academic expectations. University Park has fulfilled its mission for its students. The school opened with 35 seventh-grade students; six years later, 31 of the original students graduated. This article also describes how the school personalizes its instruction, how it makes itself relevant and rigorous, and how it makes itself collaborative. University Park provides lessons for any school looking for ways to improve educational opportunities for disadvantaged students.