UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Penn State's University Park campus has risen to No. 7 among large U.S. universities in Teach For America's fifth annual ranking of the schools contributing the greatest number of graduating seniors to its teaching corps.
Sixty-four recent University graduates joined the incoming corps for 2012, bringing Penn State's ranking up three spots from last year. Five percent of Penn State's seniors applied to Teach For America in 2012.
Penn State has ranked among the top schools for the past five years among universities with more than 10,000 undergraduates. Throughout the corps’ 22-year history, 371 Penn State alumni have taught as corps members.
Teach For America works to eliminate educational inequities among children raised in poverty and their higher-income counterparts. The corps recruits members from all academic majors and backgrounds who have demonstrated outstanding achievement, perseverance and leadership.
Corps members agree to teach for two years in one of 39 rural and urban regions across the United States. This fall, more than 10,000 corps members will be teaching in 46 urban and rural regions across the country.
Other schools in the top 10 include University of California-Berkeley, University of Florida, University of California-Los Angeles, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin, Cornell University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
For more information on Teach for America, visit http://www.teachforamerica.org.