WORCESTER, Mass. — When Damian Ramsey enrolled at the University Park Campus School here six years ago as a seventh grader, he could barely read a fourth-grade textbook or tackle a basic multiplication problem.

Today, Damian, a tall, bespectacled 18-year-old, devours the works of Dickens and Fitzgerald. In the fall, he will attend Brown University.

Damian is one of 31 students who graduated from the University Park Campus School on Sunday. His story is not unlike those of his classmates. They live in Main South, a neighborhood notorious for its high crime rate and low academic standards in this blue-collar city of 173,000. High school graduation was questionable for these students; college did not seem to be an option. But that is where each is heading this fall.

Their school was hatched out of a partnership between Clark University, which was founded here in 1887, and the Worcester public schools. In the 1980's, Clark pledged to help clean up the neighborhood.

In 1995, it invested some of its endowment in a $10 million revitalization effort, and it approached the school system about developing a rigorous neighborhood high school. It offered $390,000 from a federal grant, as well as teachers, tutors, aides and access to classes and facilities at Clark.

The city provided the school building and agreed to pay for building maintenance, salaries and supplies. The school began enrolling students in 1997, starting with seventh grade and adding a grade each year. The only admissions requirement is that students, who are chosen by lottery, live in Main South.

"These are average neighborhood kids, not select kids," said John Bassett, the president of Clark. "But by raising the bar and saying, `You can do this,' we've changed their whole outlook."

The school's principal, Donna Rodrigues, laid out her demands: an eight-hour school day, with tutoring after that and a summer session. Course work and homework would be difficult, and plentiful. Street talk, swearing and fighting were outlawed. Teachers call when students are absent, and they show up at a student's home if they are suspicious. Failure was not an option to Mrs. Rodrigues, who promised parents their children would go to college.

But dreams of college did not resonate in a neighborhood where few residents had graduated from high school and annual incomes fall short of $20,000. So Mrs. Rodrigues, a veteran educator and 30-year resident of the neighborhood, grabbed a list of incoming seventh graders and went door to door.

"I promised them a safe school," she said. "There were parents saying `Amen, amen.' It was like a revival meeting at points."

The class was made up of students like Jovan Pressie, who did not know how to read, and Trinh Thach, a Vietnamese immigrant, who could barely speak English. Teachers later found out that the parents of one student were supporting four children on less than $15,000 a year.

Mrs. Rodrigues and her teachers created math binders filled with basic multiplication drills. Handing the students a second-grade workbook would have been insulting, she said. Ricci Hall, a history teacher fresh out of Clark's graduate education program, was overwhelmed but determined to make the model work.

"It was a daunting task from the get-go," he said. "I was concerned we weren't going to be able to pull it off."

The harder the teachers pushed, the harder the students worked. They were motivated because they were treated as adults, invited to parent-teacher conferences and asked for ideas. The teachers began driving students to after-school appointments. Many students said they worked hard so that they would not disappoint the teachers. "If someone puts so much work into you, you don't want to let them down," Damian said. "You don't want to show them that their work is in vain."

It never was, Mrs. Rodrigues said.

"This is the most important thing in my life," she said. "My husband doesn't like when I say that, but they keep me up at night. I'm thinking, `Did this one get his deposit in?' I see them in the neighborhood on the weekends. It's pretty much my life."

She soon began promoting the idea of attending college. Campus visits were arranged. Teachers pitched in to cover the cost of standardized tests and college applications. Soon tears were shed with every acceptance letter, from Damian's at Brown and Boston College to Trinh's at Tufts University, to Jovan's at Quinsigamond Community College.

Damian concedes that it has not been easy. He lives with his single mother and two younger siblings. He had to give up basketball to work at a clothing store about 20 hours a week. He has not chosen a major but has a passion for words and literature. His graduation speech was about confidence, though he considers himself less self-assured than he appears.

Tiffani Brown, a graduate, will attend Clark free, as all neighborhood students who pass the admissions process can. Mrs. Rodrigues said that all of the students would get the financial help they need to attend college.

Over the years, Tiffani has seen her path diverge from those of her elementary-school friends. They enter the music store where she works. Often they are pregnant or with a child in tow.

"We have nothing in common," she said. "I have goals."

Other neighborhood students attend the 1,400-student South High School or the Accelerated Learning Laboratory, a kindergarten-through-12th-grade school that enrolls 900. South High and the city's four larger high schools will be broken down into smaller schools by 2005.

Mrs. Rodrigues said her school had more than 200 students on its waiting list each year for 30 spots.

Graduation was especially bittersweet for Mrs. Rodrigues, who is retiring. She is convinced that she has created a culture of hard work and success that will last. She hopes to take University Park's model and apply it on a larger scale, perhaps through consulting.

"It was a struggle," she said. "It was my pure will. But they made it to graduation, and they're all going to college."