Obasi Osborne, 26, of Providence, is now attending Brown University.

The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

PROVIDENCE — Obasi Osborne is one of those really smart students who fell through the cracks.

A strong student in Philadelphia, he arrived in Providence during his junior year and began skipping class and tuning out. Although he says he wasn’t a troublemaker, he was kicked out of Hope High School during his senior year, for reasons he is reluctant to discuss.

“Hope High School was a dumping ground back then,” Osborne, who is now 26, says. “There was only one teacher whose class I went to every day.”

That teacher tutored Osborne after he left high school and Osborne earned a high school diploma, graduating with his class in 2000. By then, Osborne, whose IQ is high enough to qualify him for Mensa, a high-intelligence organization, had decided that college was not right for him.

Osborne took a job at the Hot Club, a popular local waterfront bar, but there was always this nagging feeling that he was meant to do more.

“I saw so any people come in here talking about their great jobs,” he says. “Meanwhile, here I am, flipping burgers. I felt destined to do more than that.”

Four years ago, a friend invited him to attend the first class of Year Up, which provides young urban adults with an intensive one-year training program leading to a technical career or a college education. Founded in Boston in 2000, Year Up, which has 1,000 students, now operates in six cities, including New York, Atlanta and San Francisco, across the country.

Osborne was intrigued. With Year Up, he could continue to work nights at the Hot Club while studying Internet technology, a personal hobby, during the day.

“They were giving me money to learn,” he says, “and that was huge.”

In 2005, Osborne enrolled in Year Up’s first class in Providence. During the first six months, students study information technology support and then they are placed in paid apprenticeships with local companies. Osborne landed an internship with Providence Equity Partners, an international investment firm based in Providence. Providence Equity’s senior managing director, Paul Salem, serves on the national board of Year Up and his firm put up the seed money for the Providence branch.

“The minute you meet Obasi, you know there is something special about him,” Salem says. “It didn’t matter if it was 6 a.m. or 9 p.m., you could call him up and he’d say, ‘I’m going to solve this problem’ and he’d come back with a solution. It’s truly the way he breaks down a problem. After a month, we knew we wanted him.”

Meanwhile, a dreadlocked Osborne found himself working with Brown grads and Harvard MBAs. Before long, he was the company’s “go-to” guy, jetting to London and Hong Kong to set up Internet systems in those offices.

“Suddenly, I was working for this worldwide company where the work never ended,” Osborne says. “My Blackberry would buzz in the middle of the night. I was video-conferencing with London, New York and Providence. I saw how everyone was connected to the greater world.”

Providence Equity made him feel needed and, in turn, “I needed them.”

Although Osborne loved his new job, something felt incomplete:

“There was this nagging voice saying, ‘You got into Year Up for a reason and that reason was always going to college.’ ”

He spoke to his managers at Providence Equity, who told him to follow his heart and promised to help him in any way they could. So Osborne applied to Community College of Rhode Island, the University of Rhode Island — and Brown University.

As Osborne says, “It was great to know that the kings of the world were willing to give me a hand.”

Brown was definitely a long shot, especially since Osborne’s grades at Hope High School were far from stellar. But his recommendations from Providence Equity, especially Salem, a Brown alumnus, added more than a little luster to his application.

“It was my experience at Year Up that did it,” Osborne says. “I showed that I was capable of pushing myself to get the job done.”

The letter from Brown arrived in June. The envelope was fat, a promising sign. Still, Osborne let it sit unopened for an hour because he had so much riding on it.

“When I opened the letter, it said, ‘Congratulations.’ ”

Osborne e-mailed everyone who had made a difference in his life. All it said was, “I got in.”

Osborne is the first graduate of Year Up to go to an Ivy League institution and the first to be admitted to Brown University.

This fall, he started college under a special program that allows older students to take classes on a part-time basis. His goal is to major in computer engineering.

“Going to school is a different animal,” Osborne says. “With Internet technology, you had one problem and one solution. Some of these school projects take weeks to finish.”

Osborne is a little in awe of the institution, with its storied past.

“How many masters of the universe have walked through these gates?” he says. “I know that my future is wide open. That’s why I decided to go to Year Up in the first place.”

Salem says that Year Up is about giving young adults like Osborne a second chance; it’s about breaking the cycle of failure and low expectations. Year Up graduates are now working in professional roles at Citizens Bank, CVS and Textron, and they’re attending college at URI, CCRI and Johnson & Wales University.

“We’re getting national recognition because we can measure our results,” Salem says. “I look at Obasi and say, ‘What a great investment I’ve made.’ ”

lborg@projo.com