Taylor STARS FAQs

The Taylor STARS Program is made up of undergraduate students from across all four classes and representing all four academic schools. As of the 2018-2019 school year, more than 350 students were involved in Taylor STARS and this number continues to growing with each incoming class. Students are invited to join Taylor STARS based on their socioeconomic background, status as a first-generation college student, or affiliation with specific community-based organizations (including but not limited to KIPP, Chicago Scholars, and Questbridge).

Students who are a part of a program run through the Taylor Family Center for Student Success Scholars Program, including Ervin, Rodriguez, or Danforth, are not traditionally eligible to join the Taylor STARS Program and vice versa.

If you applied for and were accepted to Ervin, Rodriguez, or Danforth you can find out more about the support and programming provided HERE.

Traditionally, student are invited to join the Taylor STARS Program once they have been admitted to Washington University and before the begin their first-year on campus. If you are an incoming first-year and think that you would benefit from the programming and supports that Taylor STARS offers, then you should reach out directly to the Coordinator for Student Success.

If you are a sophomore, junior, or senior and you would like to join the Taylor STARS Program, please also reach out to the Coordinator for Student Success. 

We are committed to supporting all students from first-generation and/or low-income backgrounds, so even if you are not currently a part of the Taylor STARS Program you may be able to join or connect with us through some of our non-Taylor STARS programming.

The Taylor Family Center for Student Success works in collaboration with academic and student affairs offices across campus in order to ensure that students within Taylor STARS know about and are able to utilize resources available to the general student population. That said, the Taylor STARS program aims to provide low-income and first-generation students with additional resources so that they can thrive on campus.

Such resources include additional academic support (see GRCs), professional development opportunities, supplemental financial aid, and more. We also pride ourselves on being a social network and community for first-gen/low-income students and achieve this through student-staff led social programming opportunities (e.g. apple picking, escape rooms) as well as office-wide social events.

We hope that while you are at WashU you utilize resources from across the entire campus. We also want to make sure that should you have any questions about how to utilize campus-wide resources or find that something is missing, the Taylor Family Center for Student Success and the Taylor STARS Program are able to respond to that gap.

Participation in the Taylor STARS program does not come with any financial assistance beyond the financial aid package you receive from Student Financial Services. 

The Taylor Family Center for Student Success is occasionally able to distribute  supplemental financial resources to support students through unexpected financial challenges or costs that fall outside of their financial aid package. This resource, called the Student Success Fund, is available to all students on campus (including participants in the Taylor STARS Program) and is distributed through an application process. More information about these supplemental funds can be found on the Student Success Fund page of our website. 

The Taylor STARS program is the signature student program within the Taylor Family Center for Student Success. The Taylor Family Center for Student Success is an initiative supported by Student Affairs at Washington University.

WashU is a university of acronyms and we know that the alphabet soup may sometimes cause a confusion! With that in mind, we would like to offer the following guide to the acronyms on our website:

• APM = Aspirational Peer Mentors, a team of 30 sophomores and junior Taylor STARS who mentor a group of first-year Taylor STARS throughout their first year on campus, paying special attention to their academic and social transition to campus.
• SPC = Student Program Coordinators, a team of five juniors and seniors who create and execute social and academic programs for students within the Taylor STARS Program.
• GRC = Graduate Resource Corps, a team of graduate students who are available four hours per week for one-on-one and small group tutoring (free of charge) and specifically support students in Chemistry, Biology, Physics, and Calculus.
• SM = Sophomore Mentor, a team of juniors and seniors who support Taylor STARS during their second year on campus through a variety of office hours, workshops, and programming initiatives.
• SAB = Student Advisory Board, a team of student representatives who serves as liaisons between the Taylor Family Center for Student Success staff and the different student staff teams that support the Taylor STARS program.