This article discusses College Summit, a nonprofit effort centered around the premise that there is a sizable number of students who are more capable of college academics than their test scores and grade point averages suggest. Its four-day summer sessions are focused not on ramping up students' academic performance but in mining students' personal histories to find stories or details that might explain why their grades are not so hot, but why they would be great students once they get to college. At first blush, College Summit's approach sounds almost counterintuitive: Raise the college-going rate by focusing not on academics, but on college-application essays and nuts and bolts. Ignore the students of glaringly obvious academic merit in favor of the jock or class clown who shows occasional glimmers of untapped potential. It is not the usual blueprint for an organization trying to boost college-going rates, conceded J.B. Schramm, the founder and chief executive officer of College Summit. But, then again, College Summit is not just trying to send individual students to college. It is trying to foster what Schramm calls "a college-going culture" in entire schools--and it is showing signs of success.