Defying the stereotype that they lack the academic preparation and ability to succeed at top colleges and universities, community college students have gone on to distinguish themselves at prestigious four-year institutions year after year. These students have proven to be extraordinarily bright, hardworking and capable of excelling, and have often graduated at or near the top of their classes. Still, the all-too-common view that community college students just can't cut it at top four-year schools persists. In this article, Harold O. Levy, executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which has awarded about $147 million in scholarships to more than 2,000 high-achieving students from low-income families and $90 million in grants to organizations that serve such students points out that among the reasons that so few community college students wind up with bachelor's degrees is that many four-year institutions--particularly elite private colleges that have the most resources to help students succeed--fail to accept significant numbers of community college transfer students. He also argues that community college transfer students who've received scholarships from the foundation have excelled and earned degrees from prestigious public and private higher education institutions including: the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Los Angeles; Cornell, Columbia, Brown,Yale, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in the Ivy League; and the University of Oxford. Levy closes the article by saying that the challenge facing America is to make community college an education steppingstone rather than an endpoint for academically qualified students who want bachelor's degrees.