A small pink crown topped on a pink glittered graduation cap stood out above the crowd of seniors. Te’Naeyah Patten sat near the back. A photo of her father was fastened on her cap with the words: "Everything’s for you dad."

It was graduation day at People’s Prep but Te’Naeyah was already looking ahead.

Even before she crossed the graduation stage, the 18-year-old senior had moved into the dorms at Kean University to start a competitive summer program. Te’Naeyah wants to become a pediatrician or a gynecologist.

"Since I was in kindergarten, I used be like, 'Daddy, I want to be a doctor,' and he used to tell me, 'You know how many years of school that is?' and I would be like, 'I don't care, I'm going to do it. I want to save people,'" she said. "My dream has stayed the same ever since."

After her freshman year, Te’Naeyah transferred out of West Side High, a traditional public school, where her cumulative GPA was a 2.5. It’s been a 3.7 or higher ever since.

She remembered her dad was always pushing her to think critically.

"When I used to make bad decisions like at West Side when I got suspended, (my dad) would say to me, 'Do doctors fight?' and I was like, 'No,' so he was like, 'Then you shouldn't fight then. You're not going to be a doctor keeping the company that you keep,'" she said.

"He was kind of like my eyes. If I got off track, he put me back on."

The structured days and strict rules at People’s Prep were a departure from what Te’Naeyah was used to, she said. "At first it was really annoying, you could hear a pin drop on the floor where, compared to West Side, you couldn't hear yourself think," she said.

It took a while to get used to the uniforms, too. No shorts or skirts. Only khaki pants and black-and-white shoes. No outside hoodies allowed, only school-branded sweaters.

"It went from them not caring at all to, 'Oh you have to take that sweater off because it's not school uniform' or 'You can't wear those shoes so tomorrow let's make sure you get it right,'" she said.

On graduation day, class valedictorian Iyanu Ogunsola walked up to the stage at Rutgers-Newark.

“You’ve done something most people looking into this city could not think you would do: Succeed,” he began to tell his peers.

Te’Naeyah is the first in her family to go to college.

She walked across the graduation stage that day, blowing kisses to her family, all except her father.

Her dad died last July of an infection and didn’t see her graduate or get into Kean.

If he were here, Te’Naeyah said, he’d probably say something like "That’s my baby" or "I knew you would."

"Even if I have to cry every day to get through biology, I'm going to do it, nothing's going to stop me," she said.

Te'Naeyah's senior class averaged a 6th grade proficiency level in math and a 5th grade level in reading when they were freshmen.

This year, all 83 seniors graduated and 85 percent will go to college this fall.

Students work toward college from the moment they step foot into the three-story building on Bergen Street in the city’s Central Ward.

Staff members spend large chunks of time visiting students and their families at home before they start at the school. There are office hours for teachers every day of the week and on Saturdays, too. There’s summer school where 175 of the 380 students are usually enrolled and a credit-recovery program.

Last year, 75 percent of students graduated in four years, slightly below the city's 78 percent graduation rate.

"If (the student) doesn’t perform well while he’s with us in high school he won’t engage further in his education … and he won’t know a life different than he’s currently been exposed to," Crawford said.

The school’s office of college placement has seven full-time employees. They match upperclassmen with colleges and convince underclassmen on the merits of post-secondary education.

"We just do that relentlessly until some time around junior year (students) are like, ‘I got you,'" said Rooney, who co-directs the school with Keith Robinson. "There’s no time to waste. That's how we operate on every level."

"We're unapologetic about it," Rooney said. "We can't come to education because we want to do social justice work and then leave up to chance what happens after high school for predominantly low-income students of color."

Iyanu, the class valedictorian, praised the school’s success in college advising and drilling the fundamentals, but said the school needed more rigor. There’s one AP class and not enough emphasis on writing longer essays, he said.

"They just need to push the envelope a little more, trust us with some heavier work," he said.

Rooney said the school is piloting an honors program next year, to help meet that deficit.

"We focus on the basics and then when we're ready we do the next thing that we know is great for kids ... we just find a way to do it and we go hard," she said.