Welcome to the John Jay College SEEK Website!
" The Percy Ellis Sutton SEEK Department aspires to promote, maintain, and graduate individuals who strive to further their education and professional success within a social justice framework. We are committed to elevating, cultivating and empowering such individuals by way of academic support, financial aid, counseling and teaching to produce life-long learners and advocates of positive social change".
SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge) is a New York State program at CUNY's senior and comprehensive colleges designed to assist students who are both academically and financially disadvantaged.
The SEEK program, (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge), which in 2011 was renamed, The Percy Ellis Sutton SEEK Program, is a four-year program established by the New York State Legislature for the senior colleges of the City University of New York to provide access to higher education for promising high school graduates who have demonstrated the potential to pursue undergraduate degrees at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
The SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge) Program began as a pre-baccalaureate program at The City College of New York in 1965. It was signed into law by the New York State legislature in 1966 as the City University’s higher education opportunity program in the senior colleges. The legislation was a result of the efforts of social activists and progressive politicians whose vision was to provide access to students, who graduated from high schools that had not prepared them for the rigors of college. Today there are eleven SEEK Programs across the University: one Program in each of the seven senior and four comprehensive colleges.
In over forty years of existence at the City University, the SEEK and CD Programs have enrolled approximately 230,000 low-income students. Without University access through these Programs, many would not have been able to earn a college degree which provided entry into the professions and the middle class. Program students have been recipients of the Gates Millennium Scholarship Award, the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, the Mellon Minority Fellowship, and other national, State-wide, and local awards.